[Pdns-users] PDNS - Mysql

[Lorens Kockum]

On Sun, Oct 23, 2005 at 03:37:03PM -0500, Mark Martin wrote:
> 
> I would like to convert my existing bind 9 (ISC Bind dns) from BIND to PDNS, I have
> PDNS working on my test server(s), complete with replication (MYSQL) as well as
> importing zones to it, it works.
> 
> Main thing, in BIND, typically (I am sure there are other deviations), ns1 is a master,
> ns2 is a slave, they both answer queries, the main difference, is that ns2 is basically
> a backup of ns1.  This is probably the most basic setup, depends what one wants to do
> and how complex a dns they need in their operation.  Don't necessarily have to run
> it this way, but this is our implementation.

Ok, it's basic but it's easy to miss I suppose :-)

You say "master" for the server with the set of data that you modify,
and "slave" for the sets of data that are synchronized to the master.

When you query a DNS server you don't care or even know which
server is using the "master" data for the zone. The SOA is
supposed to mention the name of the "master" server, for
human-diagnostic purposes, and that's it.

So, master-slave is *purely* implementation.

In a conventional bind setup, you tell the master server to
fetch the zone from a file, and the slave servers to fetch the
zone from the master using AXFR. But you could easily duplicate
the files using rsync or whatever, and tell all your servers to
fetch the zones from the files! All servers are configured as
a master server would be. You could say that the master is the
server that has the "master" data, but in the case where the
"master" file or files is on yet another server, you can't even
do that, all servers are exactly identical.

Same thing in pdns. When you put MASTER/SLAVE in the zone type
you're telling pdns that AXFR is used. When you put NATIVE,
you're saying that AXFR is not used, and that the database is
maintained through means external to pdns. (That would mean
native database replication, since I don't think there's a
serious alternative, but pdns doesn't actually force you to use
that.) Like in the preceding paragraph, your "master" database
can easily be yet another server, that doesn't run pdns, and all
your pdns servers are exactly identical.

So, conclusion: if you've set up database replication, all your
zones should be "NATIVE".

Hope this helped, and that you will be as happy with pdns I am!