How do hosting companies do realtime changes?

[Kevin Darcy]

Dan Vande More wrote:

>I've found myself in a situation where we'd like to offer the ability for
>clients to update/add dns via a website.
>I don't feel comfortable with a web server is running on my master server,
>so that's not an option, so I was wondering how other people/companies do
>it.
>I've tested DLZ, but it seems far to slow for a web hosting provider(Or a
>web hosting provider that prefers to be fast:)). I've also see that bind has
>some built in APIs for databases, but it doesn't look like something that is
>a 'professional' solution just yet.
>I'm experimenting with perl scripts writing the confs and zone files, but
>what is the best way to tell my master to regenerate the files, and reload
>the zone from a remote machine?
>
>And while perl is writing my named.conf or even a dns file, even if
>everything is loaded into memory, will it affect the running named process?
>(I.E. It takes a good 2 minutes to generate everything on a full rewrite.
>Though if I did go this route, timestamps would affect which zone would be
>regenerated.)
>
>Sure there are tons of ways to do that, but which way to people feel most
>comfortable with?
>
>Is nsupdate an option?
>
>How would I do reloads? When someone changes a record, or every 2-5 minutes,
>etc.
>
>I've formed several of my own conclusions, but I'm still in the alpha stage,
>so any varying methods would be tremendously helpful.
>I don't think a canned solution would help at this point, due to the
>customizations I'd prefer, and from my searches of archives, most of the
>linked ones will not work.
>  
>
I don't know how large hosting companies do it, but I've developed a 
homegrown system here (it's DaimlerChrysler Intellectual Property, 
unfortunately) that is based entirely on TSIG-signed Dynamic Update.

                                                                         
                           - Kevin