DNS on multiple DA servers

[philmcdonnell]

Hello All,

I am moving all my cPanel servers to DA shortly. What I need to know is how to setup DNS across multiple servers when using DA.

How are current users doing DNS when you have multiple servers?

Do you have DNS on servers 1 & 2 and then the rest are only hosting servers?

Do you have different name servers on each box? If so how do you direct them? Just set them up in the registrar with the different servers?

I am not sure the best way to do it, any help would be great.

Last question, how can I sync the dns to a secondary somewhere? And what if I have multiple DNS servers how would I sync them to one secondary machine?

Thanks,
Phil

[nobaloney]

We have a DNS server in Texas: da1.ns-one.net.

It's our "slave" DNS server.

It does NOT run DA.

Each of our DA servers is the master DNS server for the domains it hosts.

So on each DA server we us ns1.ns-one.net (and the IP# of the Texas server) and nsx.ns-one.net (where the x is the number of the DA server) and that server's local IP#.

ns1 and all the nsx servers are registered as nameservers with our registrar.

Twice daily with do an ls of /var/named, and we've got a script that creates a slave.nx.named.conf file (again, where x is the number of the server) with just slave zone lines for each of the files listed in /var/named, and send that file to our nameserver in Texas, where it overwrites the last file by the same name.

Also twice a day, 15 minutes later, on the Texas server, we concatenate all those files into one new file, slave.named.conf, sort the file alphabetically, remove duplicate lines, and reload the named daemon on the Texas server.

And of course there's an include line for secondary.named.conf in /etc/named.conf.

Note that it's important to overwrite the file on the Texas server; if we deleted files on the Texas server first and for any reason the DA servers couldn't send their files, we'd stop slaving all their domains.

And it's important to do the sort and the removal of duplicates, duplicate domain names (if one domain is accidentally or intentionally hosted on more than one system) can cause the server to fail to reload properly.

In the case of duplicates we don't care which one we remove; our goal is to get the nameserver properly reloaded. The script will mail the duplicate names to us so we can track down the problem.

This isn't fully running yet, we're still working on it, but in the meantime we're doing it manually once daily. We anticipate having this available either as a slave DNS service or as a set of scripts, by the middle of May.

Jeff

[Rob T]

Jeff,

did you ever complete your slave DNS work? I'd be interested to see it in action and possibly implement it myself, if you are going to be making it available to the community.

[philmcdonnell]

I would love to see it as well....

Regards,
Phil

[nobaloney]

Our programmer has recently spent the better part of two days working on it, but it's not ready yet :( .

As is the case with many unfunded OpenSource projects, it generally will take a back burner to other work.

If you've got the ability and are willing to work on the project, let me know (private email, address below, in my sig) and we'll get you involved.

Jeff

[resolveit]

Originally posted by jlasman
Our programmer has recently spent the better part of two days working on it, but it's not ready yet :( .

As is the case with many unfunded OpenSource projects, it generally will take a back burner to other work.

If you've got the ability and are willing to work on the project, let me know (private email, address below, in my sig) and we'll get you involved.

Jeff

Check your email. :)

[nobaloney]

Thanks for the offer.

I have asked John (my programmer, not DA's) to send me the latest copies of everything he's working on; Then I'll look through my list, and see what, if anything, you can help us with.

I appreciate your offer and I'll try to get you into the loop in your timeframe.

Jeff

[philmcdonnell]

Originally posted by jlasman

This isn't fully running yet, we're still working on it, but in the meantime we're doing it manually once daily. We anticipate having this available either as a slave DNS service or as a set of scripts, by the middle of May.

Jeff

Jeff did you ever get this automated yet? If not do you have some manual scripts that do what you said? I am very interested in this.

Thanks,
Phil

[nobaloney]

Actually it's done and ready for beta testing.

I'll try to put the package together by the end of the weekend if not sooner.

Jeff

[Icheb]

Originally posted by jlasman
Actually it's done and ready for beta testing.

I'll try to put the package together by the end of the weekend if not sooner.

Jeff

Could you mail me the latest version ?
I've got a large server move comming up and I feel like I really don't want to have to reconfigure my own system ;).
Address is still: sebastian __at_ sebsoft.nl

[nobaloney]

Sebestian,

I'm trying to put this together over the weekend. It's definitely ready and I hope to have the time.

Please send me an email to remind me that you want it; I don't look at forum posts when I'm sending out software and information.

Same for anyone else; unless you've written me in the pasts day or two or three, write me again.

Or wait for the announcement in these forums and follow the link.

Thanks.

Jeff

[intelliot]

Was there an announcement on these forums yet? Did I miss it?

[nobaloney]

I should be able to post the DNS Replicator beta later today.

Jeff