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DNS Servers
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DNS Servers

PacketVMPacketVM Member, Host Rep
edited August 2012 in General

Hi,

Just wondering...what set-up do people have for their DNS servers, and how much RAM does it have? Also, how many do you have?

How do you guys have yours set up?

Thanks

«1

Comments

  • My dns servers (Resolvers) are based on the following hardware

    Intel Pentium 4
    2GB RAM
    80GB Hard Drive
    1Gbps Connections

  • PacketVMPacketVM Member, Host Rep

    @DanielM said: My dns servers (Resolvers) are based on the following hardware

    Intel Pentium 4

    2GB RAM
    80GB Hard Drive
    1Gbps Connections

    Cheap, but effective I guess! :) I've seen some people using cheap VPS's (as this would only be for a personal website). How much RAM would you recommend?

    Also, would the cPanel DNS only work OK?

  • PacketVMPacketVM Member, Host Rep

    Looks like you need cPanel for DNSOnly. Is there any other way?

  • Just have a look on http://cr.yp.to/djbdns/tinydns.html

    TinyDNS works "ok"....(just doing what a dns is supposed to do)...and already works on a VPS with 96MB RAM.

  • PacketVMPacketVM Member, Host Rep

    Nice, thanks. I'll look into that. Any others?

  • Well...if you want to have it "low end"...you won´t have many other choices cos a normal bind9/named just needs a lot more resources for working.....

  • AsimAsim Member

    My DNS server cluster is based on 128MB VPSes

    ns1=SecureDragon 128MB XEN-PV
    ns2=VooServers 128MB XEN-PV
    ns3=Hostigation 128MB KVM
    ns4=TheHostHouse 128MB XEN-HVM

    I am using cPanel DNS-only to manage it (since its for cPanel)

    Another cluster is an experiment that I am doing since a few months now, never got the time to finish it. Its a free DNS service

    ns1 + ns2 using PowerDNS

    Thanked by 1PacketVM
  • MaouniqueMaounique Host Rep, Veteran
    edited August 2012

    Or you can use free dns at some provider. I am with afraid.org since many-many years.
    Sure, if you have hundreds of domains and hosts, your own DNS will make sense.
    128 MB should be enough even in that case, 20 GB a month bw will also suffice.
    M

  • vldvld Member

    gdns uses 4 VPS containers, with 256-512MB of RAM. 2 at EDIS, 1 at Hostigation and 1 at OVH.
    Using gdnsd DNS daemon, RAM usage is below 50MB

  • PacketVMPacketVM Member, Host Rep
    edited August 2012

    @Asim - Looked at PowerDNS.

    Is this what you've done? http://www.howtoforge.com/installing-powerdns-with-mysql-backend-and-poweradmin-on-debian-etch

    @vld - Thanks. Will look at that.

    EDIT: PowerDNS looks like what I want, but I'm a bit confused about adding a 2nd server after the 1st one

    Thanked by 1Asim
  • @dominicl said: but I'm a bit confused about adding a 2nd server after the 1st one

    it is using mysql replication. just replicate the two mysql database (NS1=master, NS2=slave).

  • PacketVMPacketVM Member, Host Rep

    OK I think I get it :P Now to find 2 or 3 VPS's to use for it

  • gbshousegbshouse Member, Host Rep

    24x 256MB/5GB Xen/KVM VMs with Ubuntu 12.04 LTS running custom build of PowerDNS with Percona Cluster

  • PacketVMPacketVM Member, Host Rep

    24 :P Wow. lol

  • KuroKuro Member

    Also have a look at NSD3, uses under 5MB of RAM in an OpenVZ container :)

    Thanked by 1PacketVM
  • NanoG6NanoG6 Member
    edited August 2012

    I'm using prometeus 50MB VPS as master NS.
    PDNS + MySQL + NGINX + PHP-FPM (Sqlbuddy & Poweradmin)

  • PacketVMPacketVM Member, Host Rep

    Wow that's nice. Thanks :) I'll do something like that.

  • I'll throw in another vote for NSD3. Been using it foe about a year on a 512MB all-in-one web hosting VPS with smashing success. Gonna try out the replication stuff one of these days.

    Thanked by 1PacketVM
  • All EDIS locations as well as my own and a VPS in Australia :)

  • I use a pile of LEB VPS:

    Kansas City MO          768mb
    Orlando FL              256mb
    Fremont, CA             128mb
    Jacksonville FL         512mb
    Sittingbourne, UK       128mb
    Los Angeles, CA         160mb
    Adelaide, Australia     512mb
    Manchester, UK          1024mb
    Milan, Italy            128mb
    Surrey, UK              256mb
    Detroit, MI             128mb
    Buffalo, NY             192mb
    Charlotte, NC           128mb
    

    All are OVZ, except for the Sittingbourne UK one using Xen. Works great.

    Thanked by 1PacketVM
  • @Jack: cpanel DNS only with bind9.

    Working on switching over to PowerDNS with SQL back end. Cpanel's default of bind9 works fine, but doesn't scale well when you have a whole pile of zones:

    root@web [/var/named]# ls -l | wc -l
    14029

    Thanked by 1PacketVM
  • PacketVMPacketVM Member, Host Rep

    I'm leaning towards PowerDNS at the moment as well....Now to find some LEB VPS's.

  • How reliable is mysql replication? It seems to me like it would be a huge admin time suck as number of dns servers grows. All changes are made on the primary dns and replicated to slaves?

  • gbshousegbshouse Member, Host Rep

    @bdtech - at least in our setup there is no such thing as primary DNS, we run cluster globally on 5 continents and it's replicating very fast

  • @bdtech said: How reliable is mysql replication? It seems to me like it would be a huge admin time suck as number of dns servers grows. All changes are made on the primary dns and replicated to slaves?

    "All changes are made on the primary dns and replicated to slaves?" this. If the primary mysql server dies for some reason, all of the child nodes are able to keep running on their dataset.

    The only thing I don't like about Powerdns is that it doesn't have any functionality to self-cache answers, which means every time it gets a query, it needs to reference the SQL database for the answer. I'm compensating for this by having the mysql cache settings quite high.

  • gbshousegbshouse Member, Host Rep

    @Damian - you can setup PDNS to cache the responses for a specific time

  • @gbshouse: I think that's what he did when he said "I'm compensating for this by having the mysql cache settings quite high"

  • gbshousegbshouse Member, Host Rep

    @HalfEatenPie - but the data is cached inside PDNS not MySQL
    from PDNS docs

    3.1. Packet Cache

    PDNS by default uses the 'Packet Cache' to recognise identical questions and supply them with identical answers, without any further processing. The default time to live is 10 seconds. It has been observed that the utility of the packet cache increases with the load on your nameserver.
    Not all backends may benefit from the packetcache. If your backend is memory based and does not lead to context switches, the packetcache may actually hurt performance.
    The size of the packetcache can be observed with /etc/init.d/pdns show packetcache-size

    Thanked by 2NanoG6 Damian
  • Oh cool, that must be a newer feature. Thanks for the info!

  • Ahh, ok then @gbshouse my bad.

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