Running multiple instances

Sometimes, it can be advantageous to run multiple instances of dnsdist. Usecases can be:

• Multiple inbound IP addresses with different rulesets
• Taking advantage of more processes, using SO_REUSEPORT

dnsdist supports loading a different configuration file with the --config command line switch.

By default, SYSCONFDIR/dnsdist.conf is loaded. SYSCONFDIR is usually /etc or /etc/dnsdist.

Using systemd

On systems with systemd, instance services can be used. To create a dnsdist service named foo, create a dnsdist-foo.conf in SYSCONFDIR, then run systemctl enable dnsdist@foo.service and systemctl start dnsdist@foo.service.