[dns-wg] name servers with database back-ends

>>>>> "Jaap" == Jaap Akkerhuis <jaap at NLnetLabs.nl> writes:

    Jaap> The drawback of using a direct database back-end is that
    Jaap> this means that are close ties between the nameserver and
    Jaap> the database. If one of the two fails, you have a problem.

Indeed. The database back-end becomes a SPoF. To some extent that can
be mitigated by the fancy high-availability replication techniques
that the likes of Oracle & Sybase offer. For a fancy price of course.
Since SPoFs in the DNS are bad, I would hope important zones ran on
homogeneous DNS implementations with identical hardware, OS and system
administration. So if a TLD did use a name server with a database
back-end, I hope they'd couple that with something like dynamic
updates to a DNS hosting provider that ran a different implementation.
And maybe did anycasting as well.

I compare loading Gb-sized text zone files to teaching an elephant to
ballet dance. It can be made to work if sufficient energy is expended
though the results are not pretty.