dnsdist Overview¶

dnsdist is a highly DNS-, DoS- and abuse-aware loadbalancer. Its goal in life is to route traffic to the best server, delivering top performance to legitimate users while shunting or blocking abusive traffic.

dnsdist is dynamic, its configuration can be changed at runtime via a console-like interface. It exposes metrics that can be exported via Carbon, Prometheus, an HTTP API and the console.

Until 2.0.0 the configuration was written in Lua, but it is now possible to write the configuration in yaml as well.

A configuration to balance DNS queries to several backend servers:

newServer({address="2620:fe::fe"})
newServer({address="2620:fe::9"})
newServer({address="9.9.9.9"})
newServer({address="2001:db8::1"})
newServer({address="[2001:db8::2]:5300", name="dns1"})
newServer("192.0.2.1")

Or in yaml:

backends:
  - address: "2620:fe::fe"
    protocol: Do53
  - address: "2620:fe::9"
    protocol: Do53
  - address: "9.9.9.9"
    protocol: Do53
  - address: "2001:db8::1"
    protocol: Do53
  - address: "[2001:db8::1]:5300"
    name: "dns1"
    protocol: Do53
  - address: "192.0.2.1"
    protocol: Do53

Running dnsdist¶

If you have not worked with dnsdist before, here are some resources to get you going:

Install dnsdist.
To get a feeling for how it works, see the Quickstart Guide.
Running and Configuring dnsdist
The Packet Policies page covers how to apply policies to traffic
There are several Guides about the different features and options
Advanced Topics describes some of the more advanced features
Reference Guides has all the configuration and object information

Questions, requests or comments?¶

There are several ways to reach us:

The dnsdist mailing-list
#powerdns on irc.oftc.net

The Open-Xchange/PowerDNS company can provide help or support you in private as well. Please contact PowerDNS.

This documentation is also available as a PDF document.