Multiple A records is not for load balancing, a key component of which is full control over registering new targets and deregistering old targets in order to sh

Multiple A records is not for load balancing, a key component of which is full control over registering new targets and deregistering old targets in order to shift traffic. Because DNS responses are cached, you can't reliably use DNS to quickly shift traffic to new IP addresses, or use DNS to remove traffic from old IP addresses. As OP clearly shows, it's also not useful for geographically routing traffic to the nearest endpoint. Clients are dumb and may do things against their interest, the user will suffer for it, and you will get the complaints. Use a DNS provider with proper georouting if this is important to you. The only genuinely valid reason for multiple A addresses is redundancy. If you have a physical NIC, guess what, those fail sometimes. If you get a virtual IP address from a cloud provider, guess what, those abstractions leak sometimes. Setting up multiple servers with multiple NICs per server and multiple A records pointing to those NICs is one of those things you do when your usecase requires some stratospherically high reliability SLA and you systematically start to work through every last single point of failure in your hot path.