Multiple IP's, one Nameserver

O

outeredgeuk

Verified User
Joined
Sep 19, 2007
Messages
21
Hi All,

Is it "OK" to have multiple IP's (different servers) on one Nameserver. We currently have setup:

ns1 - ip1
ns1 - ip2
ns1 - ip3
ns1 - ip4

ns2 - ip5
ns2 - ip6
ns2 - ip7
ns2 - ip8

Thanks

David
 
You can only have 1 ip per nameserver listed with the registrar and root nameservers.
 
I have been setting up nameservers for over 10 years. I don't know if I am an "expert" or not. I had never seen the option to use more than 1 ip per nameserver nor have I seen a reason to do so. However if you do this you will need to make sure all the nameservers on all the different ip's are in sync. It can be a lot more work for very little benefit. Usually only 2 or 3 nameservers are needed.
 
floyd said:
...you will need to make sure all the nameservers on all the different ip's are in sync. It can be a lot more work for very little benefit. Usually only 2 or 3 nameservers are needed.
Click to expand...

Well DirectAdmin makes sure that all servers are in Sync so no worries there. We've set it up that way to spread the load across all our DA servers rather than opting for DNS only machines. Perhaps's we'll head that way in the future.

D
 
outeredgeuk said:
We've set it up that way to spread the load across all our DA servers
Click to expand...

DNS is a very small fraction of server load. In fact it is so small I have not been able to ever measure the load caused by DNS.

However I do like the idea of using multiple ip's for one record. I had not thought of that and thanks for that idea. This will allow us to move customers to other servers without making them change DNS servers.
 
First, I agree with Floyd; we have thousands of domains for which we host DNS and we hardly ever even notice the server load. DNS is generally only one packet in each direction. Not even TCP/IP.

Second, here's as definitive as I can find, and it's all based on observation:

There appears to be nothing to stop the root servers from holding multiple glue records for a single nameserver domain name. But I know for a fact that the registrars I've tried this on recently don't allow it. On Dotster, for example, if you add a nameserver for ns1.example.com (where example.com is a domain registered at Dotster), the new IP# will replace the old one.

I vaguely remember another registrar telling me it couldn't do it because there was already a nameserver registered.

Third:

Why not just use ns1, ns2, ns3, etc., and list all at your registrar as nameservers for a given domain.

Jeff
 
floyd said:
This will allow us to move customers to other servers without making them change DNS servers.
Click to expand...
By itself, it wouldn't, because each IP# would be pointing to a different server with a different set of records. Or am I confused in what you're writing?

The way we manage to move clients between servers without forcing them to change nameservers is we use our hosting servers as hidden masters, allowing DirectAdmin to maintain the DNS but never pointing to our webservers for authoritative DNS; instead running multiple servers as slaves.

This should work either with my Master2Slave DNS Replicator scripts, or with DirectAdmin's Multi-Server Option.

And you can use inexpensive small VPS servers for your slave servers; as we know, DNS is a low-impact service. While you do need enough memory to keep all your zones in memory, that's not a lot. While we've tested slave VPS nameservers with as low as 256MB of memory, we generally use 512MB.

Jeff
 
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