> On 1/01/2015, at 5:34 am, Rubens Kuhl <[email protected]> wrote:
> 
> 
>> On Dec 31, 2014, at 11:05 AM, Alexander Neilson <[email protected] 
>> <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
>> 
>> I am a relatively new operator of DNS servers and have inherited a rather 
>> messy existing system.
>> 
>> In the past year I have been learning more about the operations of DNS 
>> servers and some of the aspects that hadn’t been addresses before in our 
>> system.
>> 
>> Some of the changes implemented in the last year:
>> * Recursive resolvers now verify DNSSEC
> 
> Are recursives also restricting queries to the IP address space they should 
> serve ? The line below could be it or something else:

Yes, strict ACL on the server allowing recursive resolution only to our 
allocated IP Space.

> 
> 
>> * Improved ACL configuration to protect from attacks
> 
>> We operate several DNS servers, new ones are either Recursive or 
>> Authoritative however we also have an older server deployment that does both 
>> at once. We are working on splitting these roles apart by migrating the 
>> Authoritative zones off to the new authoritative group.
> 
> Keep doing that. Running the same server for both, even if the software 
> allows it, showed to be not a best practice over time. 

Building new servers over shutdown, take the duty to get improvements done 
while everything is quiet.

> 
>> 
>> What I am looking at is peoples advice as to where I can next study up to 
>> understand the deeper aspects of DNS. Particularly looking at performance 
>> tuning and resilient architecture however any good resources that provide a 
>> good understanding of the deeper details of the operation of DNS.
> 
> Most DNS resiliency out there is achieved by stateless equal-cost multi-path 
> distribution. Put the IP Address clients know in loopback interfaces, use a 
> routing daemon to announce it to a router, it will automatically fail-over if 
> a machine goes down. You can then further improve on it by each machine doing 
> health check on its own service and killing the announcement. 

I will have to look at this as the next stage of development

>> 
>> * prioritisation of root servers (my analysis of my server queries shows a 
>> high proportion of queries to a.root-servers.net 
>> <http://a.root-servers.net/> however I have identified that this is one of 
>> the lowest response performance root server from where I am located), I 
>> would like to prefer the 6 root servers with the best response time (I have 
>> found 6 with RTT of less than 5ms and the rest show RTT ~180-200)
>> 
>> * Design considerations / advantages of pre loading the root zone (obviously 
>> I have root hints however what is the benefits of pre loading the root zone 
>> statically or just rely on resolving via the hints)
> 
> AXFR the root zone and the draft mentioned. Note that root hints and the root 
> zone are different content; root hints are the address of the root servers, 
> while the root zone contains the delegation information for the TLD servers. 

I had a read of that draft, it sounds like a great way to take one level of raw 
resolution off the long run. I will do some testing against my secondary 
servers and see how it works for me in practice.

> 
>> 
>> * Architecture advantages / disadvantages for building resilient systems 
>> (i.e. are there advantages to building a system with a “hidden” master with 
>> the public authoritative servers as slaves to this master,
> 
> Yes, hidden masters are good for your health. Besides using garden variety 
> DNS software for hidden masters, there are hidden-master-only DNS software 
> like
> http://registro.br/dnsshim <http://registro.br/dnsshim> (recommended if you 
> use BIND or NSD)

I haven’t reviewed this yet but I will look at building this later on.

> http://atomiadns.com/ <http://atomiadns.com/> (recommended if you use Power 
> DNS)
> 
> That can offload some management effort. 
> 
>> are DNS views recommended for resolving “internal” DNS results or is it just 
>> at risk of a fat finger errors to provide internal addresses to management 
>> teams)
> 
> DNS views are a good thing, just be sure that they are the child of actual 
> existing SLDs. Using <something>.internal.company.com 
> <http://internal.company.com/> (where company.com <http://company.com/> is 
> registered to you) is a good thing; using <something>.internal is a bad 
> thing. 

What I was wanting to do with the views was to use the net version of my domain 
properly, from our offices / internal routers I want to resolve to management 
interface addresses (for rancid, cacti, etc) and for remote management. But 
those names externally I want to use as forward and reverse domain entries for 
the same routers.

This way we can set up a naming convention that allows the engineers to look at 
any entries in a trace route and access the same device through the same name 
outsiders see but into management allowed interfaces.

> 
>> We use Bind as our server at the moment however I prefer to have a deep 
>> understanding of both the protocol and process defined in the RFC’s (and 
>> real world practice / interpretation) plus how individual implementations 
>> handle it.
> 
> For now keep the same software so you have less variables, but when you 
> finish up splitting recursives and authoritatives and making other changes, 
> consider other software options for your recursives like Unbound and Power 
> DNS Recursor, and other options for your authoritatives like NSD, Power DNS, 
> Yadifa, Knot. 

I am planning on retaining Bind while we have mixed role servers. I start to 
build a server with Unbound for a trial but then needed to use the machine to 
validate new bind config before I pushed it to customer facing servers.

> 
> 
> Rubens
> 
> 
>  
> 



Regards
Alexander

Alexander Neilson
Neilson Productions Limited

[email protected]
+64 21 329 681
+64 22 456 2326

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