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Best DNS Service With API Access?

Posted by samzenpus on from the free-advice dept.

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?"

15 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.
    4. Re:DynDNS by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Actually I have had two accounts 'vanished' by DynDNS now and would never use them again, including one that has been with them for about 8 years first using their dyndns service and more lately (over the last few years) using their staticdns service. Both appear to have been clobbered by their 'stuff must get updated at least every 30 days' policy [1]. Which of course makes utterly no sense for a staticdns service. The staticdns account was for a domain with a PR of about 5 (it was on the air and highly linked-to for over seven years...), so I was understandably upset to see it suddenly vanish off the air one day with no warning whatsoever.

      Totally unimpressed, I would never, ever touch them for things I cared about again.

      [1] Read the first couple of sentences of the second paragraph on this page:
      https://www.dyndns.com/account/resetpass/index.html

    5. Re:DynDNS by ishobo · · Score: 4, Insightful

      You should have gotten your own domain, not the host sitting on their domain, and used the CustomDNS service. I have an account that has been inactive for over a year and it is still there. CustomDNS domains will never expire if you have been with them since the begining when they were free; all those domains were grandfathered and remain free of charge.

      Totally unimpressed, I would never, ever touch them for things I cared about again.

      With the free DynamicDNS service, you get what you pay for. If the infrastructure is that important to you, pay for the account.

      --
      Slashdot - The great and glorious cluster fuck of Internet wisdom.
  2. Run a master? by The+Lesser+Powered+O · · Score: 5, Insightful

    How about running your own master DNS server, and having your provider slave from that.

    1. 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
    2. Re:Run a master? by Sentry21 · · Score: 4, Interesting

      to heck with zone files, set up something like PowerDNS and set it up with a database backup. Do one update query and push out to the slaves. PDNS is also quite snappy, and configuration is far less arcane compared to Bind - in five minutes I had an authoritative, non-recursing DNS server which was not vulnerable to the Kaminsky vulnerability (even if it did recurse). It does things same, logs sanely, and doesn't make me feel like a clueless newbie like Bind does (even after ten years of adminning DNS servers).

      Check it out, it's worth it.

  3. Re:diy?? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    >Why not run your own??

    Apparently the article submitter isn't competent enough to do this on his/her own: Why else would he/she submit something so obviously mission critical to Slashdot?

    I *hate* seeing articles such as these on Slashdot: They fall into the "do my job for me" category, and should be tagged as such... only, now days, there are *so* many people on Slashdot lacking basic networking skills, it's almost moot: Hell, articles such as these generate traffic/revenue for Slashdot (to which I am contributing, of course), simply because of that fact. I imagine that such are the second highest traffic/revenue generator, right behind the "RIAA/MPAA"-type articles.

    My advice: If you can't figure out a viable method to accomplish what you need, using the skills and knowledge you possess, perhaps you should *hire* someone that can? And, learn from them, as they are doing it?

    Slashdot: News For Wannabes, Stuff That Matters To Them.

    Captcha: bitterly

    Now THAT is a nice one.

  4. Run your own hidden master by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Pay a nominal fee to have an ISP slave their big bad never-down DNS servers against your hidden master. Make sure it is set up to allow DDNS updates from your master so there is no lag making the new data public. All you have to worry about is TTL.

    Your server server will not take the load and will not have the uptime requirement as the public servers. You can put just about any DNS software on your server so you can use any API you want there.

  5. Dear Mr. Rho, by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Hi there, I am representing my client, Staples, Inc. Your use of the phrase "That was easy" treads upon the Intellectual Property right of Staples, Inc. Use of my client's slogan without prior written authorization is not permitted. You will immediately cease claiming that anything other than Staples, Inc. "was easy". This includes everything from DynDNS to your girlfriend and/or wife.

    Sincerely yours,

    Mr. Vatwozeezee

  6. Re:diy?? by NETHED · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I know replying to an AC won't do much, but I just feel like it, and have not much else to do right now.

    Begin Rant...
    Slashdot was _the_ site for breaking news a few years ago, and sites would be regularly slashdotted, etc. Now, blogs have taken over, and push out news MUCH faster than slashdot. I think slashdot has the ability/potential to become more of a community. I used to read the comments of slashdot for more insight, as there are truely intelligent people on this site that leave comments, but lately, the S/N ratio has gone bad.

    Stories like this are (I think) an attempt to bring back the good S/N ratio. No, slashdot no longer breaks stories, nor does it need to, the slashdot community has probably read about the articles somewhere else, and now comes here to discuss them. Yes, people flame, and there are many FPs, but thats slashdot, and it adds a little something.

    So when I read this story, I read it because I'm looking to learn something from the comments. I think thats the direction the slashdot community is going towards.

    End of Rant...

    --
    --sig fault--
  7. What the heck? by davidu · · Score: 5, Interesting
    I commented on this story in the firehose... what happened to that? [ http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=974977&cid=25145093 ]

    I wrote:

    We're working on providing a FULL API to EveryDNS. Slowly, but surely. I've got new folks on board taking over the site to make it finally be the awesome beast it should be. And it'll still be free. I'm also trying to figure out a way to tie this into Pingdom's API since a lot of people already use that for monitoring. :-)

    -davidu

    --

    # Hack the planet, it's important.
  8. 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.