We're already providing a web-based toolkit to let our existing
customers manage lists of domains to secondary from various places.
We provide it at no extra charge for co-lo and access customers.
The software it integrated into our home-grown site management
system, but I've seen other web-based named.conf editing tools "out
there" on the Internet. We haven't come up with this service as a
stand-alone product; we have "peer" type arrangements with two other
Internet providers with whom we exchange this service, and that's
fine for the most part.
We've also come up with a small set of tools to analyse an existing
named.conf file and build a list of zones that should be secondaried.
In its current incarnation, it's a bash script that uses sed and awk
for various things. For every domain listed, it will query localhost
for the list of NS records, and build tables for each of the remote
hosts listed in local master records. The major advantage of this
sort of thing is that it doesn't require someone to visit a web page to
do domain management. I know that *I* don't have the time to visit a
web page to configure every domain I want installed as a secondary. I
don't imagine other sysadmins have that much leisure time either.
We find that web-based management is only appropriate where the list of
domains is either static or very small (i.e. under 100 or so). This
makes web management appropriate for some colo customers, or for
companies who run Windows-based DNS servers and don't have the technical
savvy to install shell scripts on their servers.
Granted, our current setup is only dealing with about 3000 domains,
but given the amount of cpu and memory BIND takes, I don't imagine
we'd have any problem handling many times this number.
I believe that tools to facilitate exchange of secondary DNS should not
cost anything. If my company sets up a "secondary DNS only" service, I
suspect it would involve dedicating an IP to the customer, binding BIND
to that IP as well as the others on the box, and charging for the
bandwidth incurred by that IP in the same way we'd charge for a co-lo
customer. Memory is cheap, and it's easy to scale costs based on
bandwidth used.
p
On Mon, Mar 12, 2001 at 07:05:06PM -0800, William X. Walsh wrote:
> Date: Mon, 12 Mar 2001 19:05:06 -0800
> From: "William X. Walsh" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> X-Mailer: The Bat! (v1.45) Personal
> To: "Bizops" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Subject: Re: Do you need/want offsite secondary dns at a flat rate basis for all
>your needs?
>
>
> I'm still looking for at least 4 more RSPs before I set this up.
>
> If anyone else is interested, or has a question, please contact me
> offlist.
>
> Feel free to forward this to anyone you think might be interested.
>
> Friday, March 09, 2001, 6:41:51 PM, William X. Walsh wrote:
>
>
> > I know from some random checking that most of you have your dns
> > servers in the same IP block, and have no remote dns secondary.
>
> > I may have a way for you to get a remote secondary, at a flat monthly
> > rate, for up to several thousand unique zones.
>
> > Essentially it is a dedicated machine for pretty much dns only. It
> > would start with 256MB ram, but I would add more as usage goes up.
>
> > Essentially I am looking for 6 people to share the costs, in return
> > you would get a control panel for adding master or slave zones to the
> > bind configuration, and the capacity for at least 4,000 zones each, on
> > a this machine that will be used for this purpose only.
>
> > I would set the reload to every 2 hours to start, but enabled sudo for
> > you to ssh in and and do a manual reload if necessary.
>
> > I could also add remote MX hosting to this box if the 6 people were
> > interested, but that might lower the maximum zone capacity some if it
> > is going to be doing that as well.
>
> > The costs would be $75/mo each. A setup fee of $175 each will cover
> > the initial costs of the box (it's an existing 1U a colleague is
> > trying to sell at cost, under a month old, P3-800Mhz), and would also
> > cover the first month service.
>
> > The machine would have a unique IP address for each of you, which you
> > can register as a nameserver host so that the hostname will match your
> > existing nameserver naming structure.
>
> > Payment would be monthly, recurring by CC, or quarterly if paying by
> > check.
>
> > If there is enough interest, I can setup more of these kinds of
> > dedicated dns boxes, but I'm really only looking to get this one
> > setup.
>
> > I would let the number of users go up to as high as 10, and the cost
> > per user will go down to $50/mo if there are 10. I want at least 6
> > to get it rolling. If there are initially more than 6, I'll lower the
> > setup cost also. The server can be setup within 2 days of getting
> > everyone signed on.
>
> > Call me at 877-291-3339 if interested, or email me offlist.
>
>
>
>
> --
> Best regards,
> William mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
--
Paul Chvostek <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Operations / Development / Abuse / Whatever vox: +1 416 598 0000
IT Canada http://www.it.ca/
