DNS Policy and load balancing with multiple servers in multiple sites

Eric Soiset 21 Reputation points
2020-10-15T21:28:20.917+00:00

I looked through the DNS Policy overview docs and was wondering how to go about setting up load balancing for a website that has two servers in each of two datacenters.

I think I would set up the zones like this:
Add-DnsServerZoneScope -ZoneName "myorg.org" -Name "USZoneScope"
Add-DnsServerZoneScope -ZoneName "myorg.org" -Name "EUZoneScope"

Then add the records like so:
Add-DnsServerResourceRecord -ZoneName "myorg.org" -A -Name "website" -IPv4Address "InternalIP" -ZoneScope "USZoneScope"
Add-DnsServerResourceRecord -ZoneName "myorg.org" -A -Name "website" -IPv4Address "InternalIP" -ZoneScope "USZoneScope"
Add-DnsServerResourceRecord -ZoneName "myorg.org" -A -Name "website" -IPv4Address "InternalIP" -ZoneScope "EUZoneScope"
Add-DnsServerResourceRecord -ZoneName "myorg.org" -A -Name "website" -IPv4Address "InternalIP" -ZoneScope "EUZoneScope"

How would I set up the Policy to split the traffic between them all evenly?
I see the Add-DnsServerQueryResolutionPolicy command to split between ZoneScopes, but is there a way to split it between servers as well?

Or would I have to create a ZoneScope for each server like USZoneScope1,USZoneScope2,EUZoneScope1,EUZonescope2 then create the Policy like:
Add-DnsServerQueryResolutionPolicy -Name "websitepolicy" -Action ALLOW -ZoneScope "EUZoneScope1,1;USZoneScope1,1,EUZoneScope2,1;USZoneScope2,1" -ZoneName "myorg.org"

Or would this be a case of having to put up a NLB machine and having the resource records point to the NLBs?
Thanks for your time

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Accepted answer
  1. Rich Matheisen 44,416 Reputation points
    2020-10-16T18:53:22.813+00:00

    DNS isn't a load-balancing service. The way you propose to set up the DNS zone will provide an IP address in a round-robin fashion for each of your two zones. But if one of the servers at those IP addresses goes off-line, DNS will continue to serve up the IP address of the unavailable server. The same is true if one of the machines becomes bogged down and its response times become unacceptably slow.

    What you haven't shown is how you set up the DNS client subnets. If this is an internal-only DNS server that won't be too difficult. If it's exposed to the Internet you'll have more work to do. :-) Oh, and for internal DNS you may want to consider that IPv6 is also used by Windows machines.


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  1. Dave Patrick 425.8K Reputation points MVP
    2020-10-15T21:36:16.123+00:00

    Something here may help.
    https://forums.iis.net/t/1247879.aspx?IIS+10+WEB+FARM+ARR+

    or also reach out to subject matter experts here in dedicated IIS forums.
    https://forums.iis.net/

    --please don't forget to Accept as answer if the reply is helpful--