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Organizing Your DNS?

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the help-keep-track-of-it-all dept.

Neil Watson asks: "In previous organizations I've kept track of IPs, hostnames and DNS entries by using a single hosts file. I used a script (h2n) to convert the hosts file to DNS entries (BIND). Thus, all information was available in a single text file. For Microsoft Active Directory servers, we had that system's DNS server simply forward all of its requests to the BIND server. Now, I find myself at another organization. This network is considerably larger, with more name servers. The control of IPs, hostnames and DNS entries is somewhat loose, and it is starting take its toll. How do you organize all of your DNS information in order to easily assign and track all of the entries?"

1 of 43 comments (clear)

  1. A little more info would have helped.. by tinkertim · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Would love to help you, but not sure if these are all internal domains? mixed? How are the zones organized now?

    I use a single system image cluster (A small Xen virtualized one) with my own little sqlite concoction to keep track of what is soa for what. This lets me easily shift things around with a back end I wrote using PHP5.

    I have 2 machines, each has 7 nodes (1 director and 6 real nodes) each with 128 MB allocated to it. This gives me failover, load balancing and the convenience of the single system image without the hassles of nfs breaking, and no trust relationships to hassle with.

    I have each node running a seperate config, with CVIP running directing queries from the Internet to the 2 nodes SOA for the domain as seen from the outside world.

    This lets me put each node on a different network, but using only 1 nic (I should use 2 but I'm cheap) per machine. I really didn't *need* the admin back end, (grep works wonders so does find) but it makes things simple.

    I also haven't had a 3AM wake up due to a DNS outage in quite a while :) Total cost :

    2 P4 HT's, 4 SATA drives, and about 12 hours of time to set it up. No single point of failure either :)

    Sounds like you're in a bowl of spaghetti .. I'd tame it soon before you get blamed for the previous guy's lack of effort.

    HTH :)