BIND Requirements

[Josh Higham]

-----Original Message-----
From: Mark Douglas <Mark at 9thlevel.org>
To: bind-users at isc.org <bind-users at isc.org>
Date: Thursday, May 04, 2000 5:19 PM
Subject: BIND Requirements


>Hi,
>
>I'm looking at setting up a BIND server for one of the local ISP's, who
>currently has their DNS hosted by another company. I've setup BIND on my
own
>network, and worked with domains and whatnot, but I have never thought
about
>the actual hardware requirements behind a production DNS server. I've
looked
>at the faq and the mailing list archive, and people have talked about RAM
>requirements, and bandwidth usage. However, I haven't seen much about CPU
>usage, nor disk space requirements. So, what kind of CPU time does BIND
>require on a small domain (local ISP with only 700 users, not many
records)?
>Are disk space requirements based solely on installation size and zone file
>sizes? I hope these questions aren't too easy, but my DNS & Bind book
hasn't
>come in yet, and I need to get started on this. :/


Diskspace is a non-issue; all our zone files only take up a couple of megs.
RAM usage can vary with the number of zones, and affects caching; 64 - 128
should cover it for you, assuming no other use.  We are currently using that
in our main nameserver, which also does sendmail services, and some RADIUS.
The processor is a PPro, any decent processor should do well.  DNS is fairly
low overhead, so many machines that aren't useful for other tasks (can't
expand disk space, ram, or processor, etc) will do a good job with DNS.

Josh