Welcome Overview Up and Running Technical Assistance Support Links Site Map     updated: 4/10/98 Terrie Beloin

MacDNS Up & Running page 3 of 3 Information Required for Setup Installation Configuring the MacDNS server Configuring clients Using other MacDNS features Creating a load-sharing group Mapping addresses to names Using Other MacDNS features Load-sharing group Load sharing allows you to divide incoming requests among two or more servers, to improve performance. When you set up MacDNS to perform load sharing, MacDNS will return the address of one host out of a group when it is queried for the name of that group. For example, a site administrator could install Web servers on three hosts, each with identical data. The administrator could then assign a name to the collection of three hosts. MacDNS would then respond to queries for that name with one of the three hosts, in round-robin fashion. This kind of load-sharing arrangement is referred to as a RAIC system, or redundant array of independent computers. For load-sharing groups, the TTL is generally kept to a small number of seconds. This prevents information about any one host from dwelling in a remote cache for a long time and prevents that host from being swamped by requests due to the cached information. To create a load-sharing group: In the host list window, Shift-click to select a group of permanent hosts (Type "Perm") that you want to have as a load-sharing group. Choose Share Load from the Hosts menu. The Load-Shared Host Information dialog box appears. Type the name of the load-sharing group in the “Shared host name” text box. Confirm that the host names in the “Names of hosts to share the load” text box are the ones you want. The names appear automatically; they are the names you selected in the host list window. Adding hosts to a load-sharing group To add new hosts to an existing load-sharing group: In the host list window, select the new host(s) and Command-click to select the load-sharing host name. Choose Share Load from the Hosts menu. In the dialog box that appears, click OK. Note: You can also copy and paste new hosts in the Load-Shared Host Information dialog box. Select the new host(s) that you are adding to the load-sharing group and choose Copy from the File menu. Double-click an entry for a Loadshare host in the host list window, click in the “Name of hosts to share the load” box, and choose Paste from the File menu. Click OK to accept the change. Deleting hosts from a load-sharing group To delete a host from an existing load-sharing group: Select the load-sharing host name in the host list window. In the Load-Shared Host Information dialog box, select the host(s) you wish to delete. Choose Cut or Clear from the Edit menu; or press the Delete key Click OK.   To Disable/Enable Sharing If you want to temporarily remove a host from a sharing group, select the host in the host lists window, and select Disable Sharing from the Hosts menu. You can re-enable sharing by selecting the host again, and choosing Enable Sharing from the Hosts menu. <back to top> Mapping Addresses to names MacDNS automatically maintains reverse domains for you; there’s no need to create a separate zone file for your in-addr.arpa domain, or to worry about keeping the address-to-name mappings synchronized. The MacDNS server will automatically respond to all pointer queries, which are requests to the name server to return the correct domain name for a machine with a specified Internet address. MacDNS also supports zone transfer requests from a secondary server for any reverse domain for which MacDNS is authoritative. <back to top>   [ Welcome | Overview | Up&Running | Tech Assist | Support |Links | | SiteMap |