[Pdns-users] Performance?

[Brad Knowles]

At 3:26 PM -0800 2003/04/03, Dan Durrer wrote:

>  We are considering using PowerDNS for a service we offer.  Currently we
>  are using BIND 9.  My question is just how well does this software
>  perform under heavy load?  Are we going to run into MySQL limitations?

	For my own performance benchmarking, I did not get particularly 
good numbers.  However, others who use PowerDNS have seen query rates 
in the tens of thousands of queries per second, and appear to have 
additional headroom above that.  If you give PowerDNS sufficient 
hardware and RAM, I imagine that it should be able to handle most any 
load you'd be likely to throw at it.


	I don't know for sure how it would compare against other 
ultra-high-speed nameserver software (e.g., nsd, Nominum ANS, 
etc...), which I know can handle upwards of 50,000 DNS queries per 
second on the right hardware, but I imagine that it probably wouldn't 
be too far behind.

	Keep in mind that Nominum ANS is a commercial package, and the 
authors of nsd (at RIPE) made a point of leaving out all the features 
that are not strictly required for a TLD/root nameserver.  If I can 
ever manage to get back to a point where I can do some 
semi-reasonable performance benchmarks, I hope to be able to make 
more specific recommendations regarding PowerDNS vs. other software.

>  We heavily use the dynamic update feature of bind.  Processing roughly
>  300/updates a minute.  Our primary dns server answers about 480
>  queries/sec.  One big concern I have with BIND is that after it has been
>  running for a few hours it can take up to 15 minutes to completely shut
>  down, due to all the journal files that get synced.

	Hmm.  I can't speak for the dynamic updates performance of 
PowerDNS.  I've only been testing regular DNS queries.

-- 
Brad Knowles, <brad.knowles at skynet.be>

"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
     -Benjamin Franklin, Historical Review of Pennsylvania.

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