[Pdns-users] Round-robin CNAME behaviour

[Derrik Pates]

Rob Casey wrote:
> I am looking to establish a round-robin DNS configuration for certain
> hostnames in our Power DNS server.  Under Bind, this could be easily
> performed used using something similar to the following:
> 
>     www.test.com.   IN CNAME    host1.test.com.
>     www.test.com.   IN CNAME    host2.test.com.

Broken. Can't do it.

> However upon querying the Power DNS server, only the first entry is returned
> - For example:
> 
>     localhost:~ > host www.test.com localhost
>     www.test.com      CNAME   host1.test.com
>     host1.test.com   A       127.0.0.1

Yes, it's doing the only sane thing it can do, which is ignore any other 
CNAME records. A CNAME is like a symbolic link in UNIX - there can only 
be one CNAME, because it effectively makes the name that is associated 
with it equivalent with the one it's pointed at. (Or that's the idea, 
anyway.)

> In short, how do I do round-robin DNS configurations in Power DNS?

You can't do that with CNAMEs. It doesn't work. It won't work with _any_ 
DNS server, because it's not supposed to. (In fact, just try multiple 
CNAMEs on the same name with BIND - and watch how fast it throws out the 
zone.)

--
Derrik Pates
dpates at dsdk12.net