4 ms·

To further improve reliability, consider using a secondary-as-a-service (as well as your self-hosted secondary name service). This will only work if tinydns sup

To further improve reliability, consider using a secondary-as-a-service (as well as your self-hosted secondary name service). This will only work if tinydns supports zone transfers (AXFR/IXFR), which as far as I can tell, it doesn't. I don't use a self-hosted secondary. I use a secondary-as-a-service as my secondary /and primary/, which has the advantage of my VPS going down (for less than 4 weeks) wouldn't impact my DNS's uptime. I blogged about it this month: https://tom-fitzhenry.me.uk/blog/2012/12/host-your-own-dns-without-sacrificing-reliability.html https://tom-fitzhenry.me.uk/blog/2012/12/host-your-own-dns-w...

zrail 14y ago
Before I picked up the Ramnode server I was using BuddyNS as my primary with the prgmr node as the stealth primary. It worked fine but it was less straightforward than I wanted.
- joe_bleau 14y ago
  I'm using prgmr and buddyns as secondaries to my djbdns primary. axfrdns (part of the djbdns package) handles the zone transfer requests, and I can force a transfer with a really simple perl script.
- tom_fitzhenry 14y ago
  Though the stealth primary solution involves more moving pieces, and introduces zone transfers, which are more complex than provisioning via puppet, I've had no noticeable issues. I say "noticeable issues", because although my DNS is monitored, the monitoring isn't granular enough to detect sub-minute outages, for example. Did you have any issues in particular with the stealth primary solution?
  - zrail 14y ago
    Not any technical issues, it was just more moving pieces than I want. BuddyNS is a fine service but having to force an update with an email seemed pretty hacky.
    - tom_fitzhenry 14y ago
      You can use DNS NOTIFY rather than sending an email. When the primary is updated, DNS NOTIFY will tell each secondary about the change. DNS NOTIFY is standardised in: https://tools.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1996.txt https://tools.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1996.txt BIND 8+ supports it by default, according to http://docstore.mik.ua/orelly/networking_2ndEd/dns/ch10_03.htm http://docstore.mik.ua/orelly/networking_2ndEd/dns/ch10_03.h... There is a perl script to achieve the same thing in djbdns, according to http://www.fefe.de/djbdns/#notify http://www.fefe.de/djbdns/#notify (which joe_bleau alluded to).
- perssontm 14y ago
  Any idea where ramnodes datacenter is? And perhaps an ip address to try some traceroutes there?
arantius 14y ago
> This will only work if tinydns supports zone transfers (AXFR/IXFR), which as far as I can tell, it doesn't. http://cr.yp.to/djbdns/axfrdns.html http://cr.yp.to/djbdns/axfrdns.html It does. I'm doing this currently, I host primary DNS myself with tinydns, and the makefile sends a notify to the registrar-hosted slave DNS, which gets data via this daemon (with tcp server configured to only allow that IP).

zrail 14y ago

Before I picked up the Ramnode server I was using BuddyNS as my primary with the prgmr node as the stealth primary. It worked fine but it was less straightforward than I wanted.

joe_bleau 14y ago
I'm using prgmr and buddyns as secondaries to my djbdns primary. axfrdns (part of the djbdns package) handles the zone transfer requests, and I can force a transfer with a really simple perl script.
tom_fitzhenry 14y ago
Though the stealth primary solution involves more moving pieces, and introduces zone transfers, which are more complex than provisioning via puppet, I've had no noticeable issues. I say "noticeable issues", because although my DNS is monitored, the monitoring isn't granular enough to detect sub-minute outages, for example. Did you have any issues in particular with the stealth primary solution?
- zrail 14y ago
  Not any technical issues, it was just more moving pieces than I want. BuddyNS is a fine service but having to force an update with an email seemed pretty hacky.
  - tom_fitzhenry 14y ago
    You can use DNS NOTIFY rather than sending an email. When the primary is updated, DNS NOTIFY will tell each secondary about the change. DNS NOTIFY is standardised in: https://tools.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1996.txt https://tools.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1996.txt BIND 8+ supports it by default, according to http://docstore.mik.ua/orelly/networking_2ndEd/dns/ch10_03.htm http://docstore.mik.ua/orelly/networking_2ndEd/dns/ch10_03.h... There is a perl script to achieve the same thing in djbdns, according to http://www.fefe.de/djbdns/#notify http://www.fefe.de/djbdns/#notify (which joe_bleau alluded to).
perssontm 14y ago
Any idea where ramnodes datacenter is? And perhaps an ip address to try some traceroutes there?

arantius 14y ago

> This will only work if tinydns supports zone transfers (AXFR/IXFR), which as far as I can tell, it doesn't. http://cr.yp.to/djbdns/axfrdns.html http://cr.yp.to/djbdns/axfrdns.html It does. I'm doing this currently, I host primary DNS myself with tinydns, and the makefile sends a notify to the registrar-hosted slave DNS, which gets data via this daemon (with tcp server configured to only allow that IP).