Bind Migration best practice steps

John Miller johnmill at brandeis.edu
Tue Dec 16 22:55:30 UTC 2014


On Tue, Dec 16, 2014 at 5:29 PM, John Goubeaux
<goubeaux at education.ucsb.edu> wrote:
> Hello Folks,
>
> I'm running a Primary Master Bind Version 9.3.2 on a crusty old Solaris 9
> Sparc box that is starting to act up. Needless to say I need to move this
> service onto new Hardware/OS ASAP.
>
>
> I've got a  9.81 Version up and running on Ubuntu 12.04 ( installed via the
> latest pkg available)  but am unclear how to best proceed in migrating the
> live zone files to it AND minimize any downtime in the service.
>
> Should I configure the newer build as a "secondary master or slave" first,
> then make it the master after I see that it works/behaves properly ?
>
> Or should I migrate the configuration and zone files over and bring down
> both old and new then change the IP in the new build to the old NS's IP then
> bring it up ?
>
> Also, I can see that the Debian version has a slightly different config file
> arrangement, but looks like this should NOT be an issue as long as I migrate
> the data over appropriately.
>
> Thanks for any insight on how to best proceed here !

Hi John,

First things first, some more info on your overall DNS infrastructure
and how the 9.3.2 server fits in would be helpful.

- Is this for education.ucsb.edu, other zones, or both?
- Is the 9.3.2 server authoritative-only, or does it serve recursive
requests as well?
- Is the 9.3.2 server listed in any of the NS records of the zones you
host, or just the SOA record (public vs. hidden master?)
- How many slaves are you running?  Do all of your zones slave from
the 9.3.2 master, or do some point to other masters?
- A copy of the SOA and NS records of your zones (assuming all are
identical) would also be helpful, as would copies of your named.conf
files if you're worried about your configuration at all.

The main principle here is that you shouldn't take down the 9.3.2
server until you're _sure_ the 9.8.1 server is fully ready to roll.
Ideally you should be able to do this with zero downtime, but much
depends on your setup.  It's certainly not something you want to rush.

John
-- 
John Miller
Systems Engineer
Brandeis University
johnmill at brandeis.edu
(781) 736-4619


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