DNS redundancy

[Vincent.Tan at mail.state.ky.us]

Dear DNS gurus:

I am looking for a solution that will provide redundancy (immediate) for my
primary DNS.  We have one primary DNS, and several secondary/slave DNS.
However, when the primary goes offline, clients (especially windows) take
too long to resolve name queries (usually waiting for a timeout before
querying the secondary DNS).

A proposal was suggested by a colleague of mine that we install a layer 4
switch, such as Alteon's AceDirector.  We can attach several DNS to the
switch.  We then point clients to the switch's IP address for name
resolution.  The switch in turn, will query one of the DNS, depending on the
DNS's state (up/down) and load.  If one of the DNS goes offline, the switch
will redirect the query to another DNS.  As such, if the primary DNS goes to
lunch, it will be transparent to the clients, as their queries will continue
to be resolved by any other DNS behind the switch.

I would like to know if anyone out there have such an implementation.  If
you do, can you please give me some directions (e.g. hardware used, BIND
setup, physical topology, etc.)  I am also eager to hear any other viable
solutions that will resolve my problem mentioned above.

Thanks in advance...


Vincent Tan [MCSE, CNE, CIP, MCP, CNA]
vincent.tan at mail.state.ky.us