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How Many for a DNS?
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How Many for a DNS?

eastoncheastonch Member
edited January 2013 in General

Herro Guys,

Thinking about hosting my own DNS cluster, just because well, I'm bored.

Im just curious on what others use, how they do it, etc.

Do you tend to use Servers in the country as you? Or do you tend to use ones that are remote? For instance i'm in the UK, should I stick to VM's in the UK or use EU / US ones?

How many RAM would you reccomend?
What's the basis on picking a good VM to use as a DNS server? Good routing? How do YOU test that?

Thanks guys,
Chris.

Comments

  • Create a geo-dns cluster?

  • It only makes sense if there is diversity. I.e. you certainly don't want all your name servers in the same country or with the same provider.

  • I have 4 of them, spread all over the globe. A simple 128Mb VPS will do for a DNS install.

  • gbshousegbshouse Member, Host Rep
    edited January 2013

    20 anycast PoPs :)

    256s will be enough if you want to run let's say PowerDNS with MySQL backend.
    From networking point of view use bgp.he.net to check your (potential) provider's upstreams and pick the one with best network.

  • bdtechbdtech Member
    edited January 2013

    @gbshouse Would every pop need MySQL?

  • gbshousegbshouse Member, Host Rep

    @bdtech - in our setup yes, but you can use regular master-salves setup and flat file based servers (take a look on this topic http://www.lowendtalk.com/discussion/5409/nsdmin)

  • More then 2, that's for sure.

    When BuyVM was moving, they had servers offline and then ServerDragon had some issues. I remember reading someone saying they had ns1 hosted with one company, ns2 hosted with the other.

    This guy took the appropriate measure of separating his nameservers, but just goes to show that (although rare) if you only have two, both can be out at the same time even if they're in different datacenters. I had a DNS server with Securedragon that went out last week during that outage, but I also had 3 other ones online still so all was well.

  • In regards to being geo redundant. Without any cast, what would the point of having your dns servers in different regions matter? I have one dns with hostigation in LAX and one with ramnode in ATL. If I add another one in the UK, would clients in Europe be able to query said server?

  • gbshousegbshouse Member, Host Rep

    @sdotsen - yes and no: if you add 3 name servers NS1, NS2 and NS3 they will be served in round robin order so there is no guarantee that client from EU will connect to UK based server

  • herbyscrubherbyscrub Member
    edited February 2013

    When you query a name, aren't you using 4.2.2.2 (or any cache server), so the enduser does not actually care where your nameservers are located as long as any of them are reachable?

  • sdotsensdotsen Member
    edited February 2013

    @herbyscrub ah right they're cached right? it's not like a web server where there may be latency if a user is connecting to a server in the US from EU. As long as any of them are reachable, I'm good (I assume).

    The user isn't "querying" against your nameservers, the root dns are.

  • In this most basic example, location/latency does not matter, just looking for uptime with at least one server being responsive at any given moment. Generally, more servers is better, but most VPS have 99.90% uptime and the chances of two being down at the same time is highly unlikely.

    Again, most basic example, you can run DNS using less than 20MB ram, 50MB hdd and some small amount of bandwidth using NSD3 or something similar.

  • Thanks, I am running NSD and haven't had any issues. Hostigation was down the other day, luckily my secondary DNS was with another provider.

  • I have 14 spread around the globe. no two are in the same location. 7 in the states.

  • Thinking about PowerDNS, any thoughts?

  • @DeanClinton so if your dns ever fails id say you'd have had a really bad day

  • 14 DNS servers @DeanClinton. WOW!

    Is that just for personal projects or real business.

    N+1 = 3... redundancy is 3 servers, minimum.

  • DeanDean Member
    edited February 2013

    @twain - Hahaha yeah, or someone's taking a pop at every single server I have :)

    @pubcrawler - They are all linked together (cPanel DNS Only) so they replicate to each other.

    I have NS1 linked to 7 IPs and NS2 linked to 7 IPs. I plan to eventually get one more and then switch IPs around so it's 5 on NS1,2 and then the new 3

    I host various websites on a cPanel server - local charities as well as the Etomite CMS website and forums, as well as some personal ones and some friend's sites.

    On average, usually there's a minimum of 13 of the 14 DNS servers up (and believe it or not my VPS.net server is the one that's been down the most, more than AlienVPS). I don't think I've had two go down.

    I know that if (for example) the US goes dark, then my clients can still receive their e-Mail that's hosted elsewhere. Plus 5 minutes TTL on nameserver IPs mean I can switch things out.

    I like to think that if I can do one thing redundant, it's my DNS. :-p

  • Pretty cool @DeanClinton.

    Now I know who to ping when I have a cPanel end user question. Been cursing cPanel lately. Never used it :)

  • @pubcrawler - i'm not a cPanel expert - there's probably people on this board much better at it than me!

  • I have 4 DNS for my own domains, 2 of them are 32Mb, 1 is 64Mb and 1 is 128Mb to run a web interface.

    They are all from different providers though, and 1 is in EU, 3 in US.

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