DNS point to a backup server

[cblanzy]

Is there a way to configure tiny dns (or any dns for that matter) to point to one server, then switch to a backup server if the main server is down? Currently our DNS is TinyDNS run on a FreeBSD system.

 

[dmandell]

Usually this is done on the client side. If you have two DNS servers listed in the client DNS settings, and one does not respond, the client will try the other.

But if you are talking about "forwarding", you can do the same thing on the server side by specifing two forward server addresses.

Don't know if this is your question.
Dana

 

[dbase77]

Hi,

I suggest you setup 2 DNS. I for primary and the other one for secondary. Put both DNS in your client DNS setting. Secondary DNS is just a copy of your primrary DNS. If primary goes down, secondary DNS will take over. Redundancy is good.

regards,
feroz

 

[cblanzy]

Actually, what i have is a backup webserver, and i'm wondering if i can setup a DNS server to be aware of my main webservers status, and if it finds that that webserver is down, redirect requests to my backup webserver.

 

[dmandell]

That sounds more like something you would want to do with a load balancer, or a router or firewall that does load balancing.

The only thing I can think of that would work at all (and only partly at that) would be to put both server ip addresses for the one host name.

Windows clients would have a 50/50 chance of success if one server went down. As a matter of fact, windows clients would alternate adresses for every other DNS lookup.

Dana

 

[Stowell]

Hey cblanzy:

I was wondering if you have figured out the answer to your question in this post. We are looking to do a similar thing.

Please let me know what you have figured out about this.

Thank you.
Jeremy Stowell