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Best DNS Service With API Access?

netaustin writes "My company runs quite a few media websites, mostly on Drupal, and about half on ec2. We have a good server setup with ec2 which allows us to route requests through Pound, a cluster of Varnish servers, then a cluster of Apache servers. We manage 50 domains (one per state) like this. Problem is, anytime things change, we have to manually adjust DNS for all 50 states, which is very boring and usually causes negative side effects too as we can't ever adjust all 50 DNS entries at once. We'd like to just change DNS providers and be done with it, but there are a lot of options, and I don't often shop for DNS services. I use EveryDNS for my personal domains, but I don't think they provide an API and it'd feel a little dishonest to reverse engineer the forms on their site since they're an esteemed donations-based service. I wouldn't feel bad about doing that to DNSPark, but they have a CAPTCHA image accompanying their login form, so goodbye DNSPark. I found a couple services that seem to do what I'm looking for, but they both feel a bit Microsoft-y and since I only want to change once, I want to get this right. Advice?"

12 of 221 comments (clear)

  1. DynDNS by rho · · Score: 5, Informative

    DynDNS.

    That was easy.

    --
    Potato chips are a by-yourself food.
    1. Re:DynDNS by crush · · Score: 5, Informative

      Yeah. One of the most reliable and ethical operators in the business.

      This seems like an appropriate link.

    2. Re:DynDNS by oskard · · Score: 4, Informative

      Also be sure to check out Dynect!

      DynDNS also offers another service, more business class. It has a MUCH more robust API, offers Failover, Load Balancing, Anycast, etc. Multiple users, node-based permissions. 37Signals, Mozilla, and RackSpace use Dynect. Highly recommended, give them a call!

      http://dynect.com/technology/developers.html

      http://dynect.com/features/api.html

      --
      Sigs are for Terrorists.
    3. Re:DynDNS by rho · · Score: 5, Informative

      Yeah. One of the most reliable and ethical operators in the business.

      This should be emphasized. DynDNS is both reliable and ethical, and have been for a long time. Indeed, since before they went commercial. When they were non-com, you could get unlimited custom DNS services for a $30 donation. Guess what? When they went commercial they honored that pledge. I still have a number of "never expires" services because of this.

      Seriously, it's not worth dicking around with DNS. Get it done right the first time.

      --
      Potato chips are a by-yourself food.
  2. Run your own dns servers .... try powerdns by brainchill · · Score: 3, Informative

    It sounds like it's time to run your own dns servers. For what you're trying to do I recommend powerdns with either a mysql or postgres backend. You can do massive updates with regular sql update syntax very quickly and anything that can talk mysql can update it ... perl, php, ruby, etc ... you name it.

    1. Re:Run your own dns servers .... try powerdns by abigor · · Score: 3, Informative

      If you indeed do need to run your own dns servers, then I second the PowerDNS recommendation. Having a proper sql backend is just paradise compared to the flat files of, uh, a certain other dns server that should be killed off. It's also worth noting that PowerDNS splits the authoritative server and the recursor into two separate daemons, which is quite a nifty idea.

    2. Re:Run your own dns servers .... try powerdns by Lennie · · Score: 3, Informative

      It's not nifty to split authoritative and recursive, it's sane (security).

      --
      New things are always on the horizon
  3. ZoneEdit by bziman · · Score: 3, Informative

    I've been using ZoneEdit for years and they're great. Free for small domains, and really cheap for huge domains. It never, ever breaks. And it's super easy to work with.

  4. Re:FreeDNS by almightynayr · · Score: 3, Informative

    afraid.org will do everything he wants and then some, been using them for over 5 years now with no problems. check it out

  5. Re:Run a master? by Charles+Dodgeson · · Score: 5, Informative

    Me, too. (That means "mod parent up")

    You can use DNSpark (whom I use) or other providers as slaves. Your master doesn't even need to be publicly accessible, just as long as you allow the appropriate zone transfers. This way you can have your own little scripts that generate the zone files on a host you fully control, while having the world query those professionally managed servers.

    --
    Prime numbers are exactly what Alan Greenspan says they are -S. Minsky
  6. GoDaddy dba WildWest by bobbozzo · · Score: 4, Informative

    GoDaddy dba WildWest has an API, but we seem to have ended up being guinea pigs for it, and it didn't go well. Their documentation had features that didn't exist, promised 24-hour turnaround on support failed, ...
    It's working OK now, but I can't really recommend it.

    --
    Nothing to see here; Move along.
  7. Re:Run a master? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    "who would you go to for DNS glue records?"

    If really needed, your DNS registrar will do.

    "you need DNS glue from someone above you in order for those DNS servers to be valid."

    No, you don't.

    "Or has stuff changed since I last did this a few years back?"

    No, it hasn't.

    You only need glue records... when you need glue records. For a NS that means only if the name server for a domain happens to be within the same domain (so NS for example.com is for instance ns.example.com). On the typical scenario DNSs will be something like ns1.mycompany.com, ns2.mycompany.com and they will serve i.e. onestate.com, othercompany.com and the like. No glue records involved.