Maximum number of zones supported?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Brandon.S.Lay
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Brandon.S.Lay

I m creating a capacity sheet for our dns servers and wondered if
anyone has DNS capacity stats for Win2k or 2k3, in particular, maximum
number of zones supported.
 
I m creating a capacity sheet for our dns servers and wondered if
anyone has DNS capacity stats for Win2k or 2k3, in particular, maximum
number of zones supported.
Click to expand...

How big is your domain or largest sites?

It is doubtful that you will be able to overrun
any of this unless you are a) a GIANT company
or b) an ISP with many thousands of (DNS zone)
customers.

Only as an ISP (or DNS registrar) are you likely
to have enough zones to even CONSIDER such
limits because in any realistic enterprise (non-ISP)
situation the zones will be in hierarchies and
so each DNS server will not be required to hold or
even know directly about every domain/zone -- only
the "tops of trees" and immediate children will be
required on each DNS server. (This is why the
Internet can contain many millions of zones without
the 13 or so root servers becoming overloaded.)

Even for large companies the physical distribution
of the computers on different LANs (separated by
WANs) generally dictates adding DNS servers before
the actual number of clients or requests become a problem.

Any such "stats" will be dependent on the actual
pattern of usage, and I find that collecting such info
is usually a waste of time.

And most of the time you are going to want to use
DNS AD Integration which changes any such
requirements as well.

Generally, you measure the performance and add
more DNS servers as performance drops below
prescibed/promised thresholds (e.g., service level
contracts.)
 
In (e-mail address removed) <[email protected]> stated, which I commented
I m creating a capacity sheet for our dns servers and wondered if
anyone has DNS capacity stats for Win2k or 2k3, in particular, maximum
number of zones supported.
Click to expand...

10's of thousands. I'm sure there are ISPs out there using Windwos DNS that
can attest this. Of course the server would need to be beefed up to support
such a scenario with lot's of RAM, fast fault tolerant harddrives, gigabit
connections, etc, and of course we need to also consider how many requests
per second, and realistically, if the internet connection will handle the
requests. We must also take into account EDNS0 support (whether routers
support it). If not supported, it will decrease performance. You can write a
script to create 10,000 zones, then create a script (or use some of the
tools below) to nail the server with concurrent requests while watching
Performance Monitor configured to log DNS data only.

Curious, how many zones are you considering to support?


Some tools and more info below...

Load Testing Monitors - Antara.net Performance Counters
http://www.mercury.com/us/products/performance-center/loadrunner/monitors/antara.html

Avalanche SmartBits (numerous tests and load simulators)
http://www.spirentcom.com/documents/664.pdf

Agilent NetworkTester (not cheap) - will test numerous types of apps,
including DNS
http://advanced.comms.agilent.com/networktester/

Pv6-draft-ietf-dnsext-message-size-04.txt [Explains UDP equals increased
performance]
http://www.greatplains.net/activiti...05/IPv6/draft-ietf-dnsext-message-size-04.txt

Nnameservers: BIND and NSD Perf Testing
https://www.centr.org/docs/2006/10/nameserver-perf.pdf

List of other types of testing tools:
http://www.softwareqatest.com/qatweb1.html


--
Ace
Innovative IT Concepts, Inc (IITCI)
Willow Grove, PA

This posting is provided "AS-IS" with no warranties or guarantees and
confers no rights.

Ace Fekay, MCSE 2003 & 2000, MCSA 2003 & 2000, MCSE+I, MCT, MVP
Microsoft MVP - Directory Services
Microsoft Certified Trainer

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