load balancing....

Re: load balancing....

From:

Date:

Time:

At 3:08 PM -0500 1/4/2000, Paul S Vail wrote:
>>>*should* be listed in the secondary dns' Secondary table? (note:
>>>z.y.x.in-addr.arpa. correction from previous typo)
>
>
>Chris,
>
>Do you have any rough notes on load balancing. I know y'all are
>rewriting that portion of the guide, but I need some idiot-proof
>guidelines for setting up a qdns/w* set of servers for primary and
>secondary hosting. My goal is to make our systems as redundant as
>possible to avoid something that happened today: my primary ISP changed
>all of their IP addresses, but forgot to notify me of the change until
>after it happened. I've made the changes for my clients with the
>appropriate registrars -- but for the next 48 hours or so until they take
>effect, I'm screwed for serving.
>
>So, what I want is: use redundant name and http/mail servers, with the
>fast servers on at the colo site and my wimpy machines here on a
>dedicated dialup. I know that DNS isn't really designed to do what I
>want, but perhaps by setting the load characteristics someone mentioned
>to 9999 (primary) and 1 (pokie), I can achieve some possibility of having
>a backup system to cover my ass when the primary goes down.

No problem. Set your DNS like this:
example.com. NS primary.example.com.
example.com. NS pokie.example.com.
example.com. MX 10 primary.example.com.
example.com. MX 20 pokie.example.com.
example.com. A <address of primary>
primary.example.com. A <address of primary>
pokie.example.com. A <address of pokie>
www.example.com. Load Hosts: 2 (primary and pokie)

You can also add records like this, if you like:
mail.example.com. CNAME primary.example.com.
ftp.example.com. CNAME primary.example.com.

Or, for greater flexibility in your mail setup, you can use these:
smtp.example.com. CNAME www.example.com.
pop.example.com. CNAME primary.example.com.

This way, even if primary goes down, users can still send mail. They won't be able to get their mail, though, until primary comes back up.

Use "primary" as your primary DNS server, and "pokie" as your secondary DNS server. On pokie, make sure to put two entries in the Secondary Data window - one in the main panel for your domain, and one in the load balancing panel for your load balance record.

Then, as you said above, use fixed load preferences on your WebSTAR servers - 9999 for primary and 1 for pokie. The dedicated dial-up line for pokie will likely get a fair amount of DNS traffic, but almost no other traffic, so long as both are functioning.
____________________________________________________________________
Chris Buxton cbuxton@menandmice.com
Men & Mice http://www.menandmice.com
Makers of: QuickDNS Pro

Sales:
888/4-DPOINT

Support:
858/452-3696