Moving networks

Jim McAtee jmcatee at mediaodyssey.com
Thu Sep 25 17:25:18 UTC 2003


What would be the recommended procedure for moving our systems to a new
network?  Here's our configuration, which is pretty basic:

We've got three name servers.  NS1 is master for about 300 zones.  NS2 has only
slave zones.  NS3 is operated by a friend and located on another network.  It
also slaves all of our zones.  NS1 and NS2 will be moving to new addresses,
while NS3 is staying put.

I don't have the luxury of leaving a name server running on the old network at
the current IP addresses.  It all has to be picked up and moved.  The move
itself will take 2 to 3 hours.

My plan was something like:

- Gradually lower TTLs on all zones until the morning of the move I have them
down to 10 or 15 minutes.

- Imediately before moving, update IP addresses within all zones to the new
network addresses.  Allow this information to propogate via BIND's notify
mechanism from the master to the offsite NS3 server.  This usually only takes a
minute or two.  Verify the transfers in my logs and test NS3 to make sure it's
serving up the new addresses.

- Pull the plug on NS1 and NS2 and move them to the new location.  Bring them
back up at their new addresses.

At what point in time should I update the IP addresses of NS1 and NS2 with our
registrar (OpenSRS)?  Does it make any difference if this is done before the
move, in anticipation of the 48 hour TTL on glue records, or should it be done
only after the servers have been moved?

What else am I forgetting?

One other complication.  We do a small amount of web hosting.  Several of our
hosting customers have DNS served by other name servers.  What would be the
best way to minimize downtime for their web sites?  Coordinating DNS changes
for them at the exact time of our move (which will be on a weekend) is going to
be a nightmare, especially since none of those customer's run their own DNS and
have to request the changes through their ISP.

Thanks,
Jim





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