experiences with changing a name space or operating two different name spaces?

Jim Reid jim at rfc1035.com
Thu Jul 22 09:42:40 UTC 2004


>>>>> ">" == =?iso-8859-1?q?Hanspeter=20Hagg?=  <iso-8859-1> writes:

    >> hi all, does anyone have experiences with changing a name space
    >> or operating two different name spaces?  

Of course!

    >> the only way of achieve such a mayjor change is by operating a
    >> parallel dns-infrastructure and to migrate applications and
    >> systems via lifecycle processes.  so does anyone have
    >> experience with operating two different name spaces?

Of course! Though to maintain everyone's sanity, the best approach is
to move everything to a single name space.

    >> i think the new dns-installation is the easiest part of the
    >> entire change.

That may well be true since changing name spaces does not have to mean
changing DNS infrastructure. The same servers can serve both.

Moving or merging name spaces is easy in principle. A little bit of
scripting can generate new zone files from old ones. Or both sets of
zone files from some sort of metafile or back-end database. However
the detail is a different story. Domain names get embedded in
application software. And in configuration files and ACLs. And shell
scripts. And users' .login and .cshrc files. Old URLs get stored in
web browser's bookmarks. Old domain names live in HTML and links from
other web sites. Things like software licences and certificates have
domain names embedded in them. Cleaning all this up can take a long
time, even with support from senior management. And that assumes a
detailed impact analysis and migration plan is prepared for each
domain that's to be migrated. ie Changing domain name A will affect B,
C & D which means E & F have to do G & H, I has to do J before K does
L or M, etc, etc. Query logging can help here since it will show who's
looking up what.


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