Master Servers

Re: Master Servers

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At 4:57 PM -0700 5/2/02, Warren Michelsen wrote:
>At 12:45 PM -0700 5/2/02, Men & Mice Support wrote:
>>Here's what happens when you save:
>>
>>- All master servers are given the new version and told to load it
>>into memory.
>>- 5 seconds later, any and all slave servers are told to check
>>their designated master server(s) for an update.
>
>So it's not a problem having multiple master servers for a zone. In
>that case, does it matter which server is shown as the master server
>for a zone when multiple masters are configured?

No. This field is purely informational. Its contents don't affect the
way your DNS service operates.

>Would it be prudent to split my zones between two masters (as listed
>on the zone information)?

No, it wouldn't really matter and would probably cause additional
work for you to maintain.

>>So in each of your three scenarios, everything works fine - the new
>>version is loaded onto all servers within seconds.
>
>Cool. I've been operating with a master and slave. I could be using
>two masters.

Yes. However, with two masters, be sure to never edit the zone unless
you're connected to both servers. If you were only connected to one
and saved a change to a zone, the following bad things would happen:

- The disconnected server would never get the update, whereas a slave
server would.

- When you next opened the zone while connected to both servers,
QuickDNS would randomly choose one of the two servers to get the zone
from. It's not smart enough to get them both, compare, and take the
most recent version.

In other words, QuickDNS is designed for use with one master and zero
or more slaves, not multiple masters. It does fine with multiple
masters as long as you're always connected to all masters whenever
you save changes to a zone.
____________________________________________________________________
Chris Buxton Men & Mice
support@menandmice.com Making DNS Easy

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