DNS Cluster Question

[Tom Pyles]

Just a quick question on how you guys set up your clustering. Do you have ALL of your servers clustered with each other. I have seen some load issues when it was set up like this (from dnsadmin). To cut back on that, what I'm thinking is to have a main server that shows all servers within the cluster. I then sync all other servers with that main server, but not together. So, each 'sub' server talks with the main server but the 'sub' servers do not talk with each other. In theory, all DNS records should still be up to date as information is passed from sub server to main server and then to the other servers. Does anyone see a problem with this set-up?

 

[freedman]

Just a quick question on how you guys set up your clustering. Do you have ALL of your servers clustered with each other. I have seen some load issues when it was set up like this (from dnsadmin). To cut back on that, what I'm thinking is to have a main server that shows all servers within the cluster. I then sync all other servers with that main server, but not together. So, each 'sub' server talks with the main server but the 'sub' servers do not talk with each other. In theory, all DNS records should still be up to date as information is passed from sub server to main server and then to the other servers. Does anyone see a problem with this set-up?

this will depend largely on what you tell your hosting clients to use for their root nameservers..

if you have 3 computers A,B & C... and you tell people to use A & B for their nameservers.. when you set people up on C, all their load will go to A, and B and none going to C... if you have B sync to A and C sync to A, then when someone looks for that domain at B it wont get an answer and sporadically this could mean bad things--emails undeliverable, etc..

so just be careful with that.
I havn't found the load of the dns cluster to be too overwelming, but I dont have multiple thousands of domains... what I'd recommend if you do is:
set things up in pairs.
domains on A or B use A & B for root nameservers
domains on C or D use C & D for root nameservers and just dns cluster the pairs.

potentially, you could include a 3rd machine, but having one machine sync 2 disperate sets of domains might not work the way you hope