Deprecating BIND 9.18+ on Windows (or making it community improved and supported)

[Richard T.A. Neal]

I spent some time last week looking at options for running BIND under WSL on Windows Server. Unfortunately it doesn't presently look like a viable solution for the following reasons:

There are two versions of WSL: WSL1 and WSL2. Development has all but ceased on WSL1, but WSL1 is the only version that can be installed on Windows Server 2019.

Microsoft have not yet confirmed whether WSL2 will be available for Windows Server vNext (Windows Server 2022, or whatever they name it).

Even if WSL2 is made available for Windows Server 2022 it has some serious networking limitations: it uses NAT from the host, so your Linux instance gets a private 172.x.y.z style IP address, and that IP address is different every reboot. Proxy port forwarding must therefore be reconfigured on every reboot as well.

There has been mixed success getting WSL2 to work in bridged mode, but it is not supported by MS. I expect many/most Windows server admins would not want to run something in an unsupported configuration which may suddenly stop working following a Windows Update.

At this time I don't therefore believe that running BIND via WSL or WSL2 on Windows Server is a viable reliable solution.

Best,

Richard.

-----Original Message-----
From: Richard T.A. Neal 
Sent: 29 April 2021 6:41 pm
To: BIND Users <bind-users at lists.isc.org>
Subject: RE: Deprecating BIND 9.18+ on Windows (or making it community improved and supported)

<snip>
The WSL2 option is an interesting one and not something I'd ever considered.
</snip>

Richard.