[dns-operations] GSLB options?

[Simon Lyall]

On Wed, 28 Oct 2009, Paul Vixie wrote:
> can you define what you mean by "quite well" here?  i know that nobody ever
> got fired for buying it, and some folks got fired for not buying it.  but
> it doesn't rule out the need for at least one well connected high capacity
> server, and once you have that server, what problems do you still have, that
> are amenable to DNS-based GSLB ("stupid DNS tricks"), where the cost of
> having those problems is higher than the cost of solving them?

Well our setup is a fairly plain boring website, 99% read-only stuff. We 
have two pops with that normally handle half the traffic each.

GSLB is used to send 100% of "write traffic" to one pop which is the 
"MASTER" and 50:50 for other traffic most of the time.

If one pop is having problems we switch DNS to just give out the other IP 
and 99% of traffic switches over in minutes. We also may adjust traffic 
balance to say 60:40 for other reasons.

We don't own IP space or network equipment so anycast is not an option.

Recently we started rolling out some a "CDN" for static files. It's just a 
case of buying cheap dedicated servers somewhere, installing a bit of 
software and making each a certain percentage of the traffic for the 
"static files" domain. Means I can deliver traffic in single digit
($US) cents/GB and buy in units of just a few TB per month for each box.


-- 
Simon Lyall  |  Very Busy  |  Web: http://www.darkmere.gen.nz/
"To stay awake all night adds a day to your life" - Stilgar | eMT.