[Techtalk] DNS server load balancing

[Gayathri Swaminathan]

Hi:

When presented with this scenario before, chose to implement DNS using
OpenBSD.

Started with round-robin on pf for load balancing but later also was able to
configure CARP ( arpbalance parameter ) to effect load balancing.

There are works related to slbd and hoststated already moving along. You can
read all about that here:

http://www.openbsd.org/papers/eurobsdcon07/pyr-loadbalancing

Good luck with your project.

Gayathri

On 10/17/07, Magni Onsoien <magnio+lc-techtalk at pvv.ntnu.no> wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> I am looking at a solution for load balancing traffic to top level
> domain DNS servers.
>
> Today we have 6 authorative name servers, some of them unicast based and
> some anycast. We plan to expand this structure by adding more anycast
> servers in several parts of the country.
>
> To make this solution as robust as possible we want several servers in
> some of the anycast sites (due to possible network isolation we can't be
> sure the clients in the area can actually reach other servers but they
> may still want to connect to local services), and I am looking at load
> balacing solutions for this so we can increase redundancy and robustness
> by having several servers here.
>
> My plan is to distribute the zone data to all slaves (unicast and
> anycast and load balanced and everyone). The load balancer will
> then send traffic to them to balance load, and if one of them fails for
> some reason, the other will get all the traffic. Preferably the balancer
> will detect a failure only in the service, too, even if the ethernet
> port still receives traffic.
>
> The traffic here will be DNS traffic, i.e. UDP and TCP on port 53, but
> it may be "strange" traffic, like DNSSEC or other future protocol
> variations, so the balancer should accept anything that comes on these
> ports and not just dump it because it didn't match the protocol exactly.
>
> I haven't looked at many products yet, since it's a bit hard to search
> for exactly this scenario (which is not the same as round robin DNS to
> load balance traffic to other services), but I hope some of the chix
> know something I could look at - or what completely useless products to
> avoid.
>
> Thanks in advance!
>
>
> Magni :-)
> --
> sash is very good for you.
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-- 
Gayathri Swaminathan
gpgkey: 3EFB3D39
Volunteer, FDP