DDNS restrictions - message too large error during zone migration

[dirjan]

I am looking for some advice from the experts here. I am looking into using dnscontrol to replace our current custom scripts to perform provisioning. We run some different technologies internally and the AXFR+DDNS provider seems to be ideal to provision all consistenly in the same way.

There is however 1 open item for which i have not found a good solution yet. We run a couple of 'large' zones (around 10.000 records) which generate the following error during the initial migration:

FAILURE! dns: message too large
Done. 9344 corrections.
completed with errors

I can split my dnsconfig.js file up so that it only contains a max of around 1.000 records and provision everything in batches, this works, but i was hoping to find a better solution. I was thinking on using this bootstrapping as well as a way to quickly bootstrap a new system in case of complete infrastructure failure.

Any and all feedback, tips and tricks etc would be greatly appreciated!

[tlimoncelli]

A few providers don't handle mass updates very well. This is an area that DNSControl could improve on.

A simple (lazy?) trick: Rather than making many files, use comments. Comment out all but 1000 records, run dnscontrol push, then remove 1000 comment, push, repeat.

Some providers permit you to upload a zonefile. You can generate a zone file of the domain (add the "BIND" provider to the zone), and upload it to the provider. You'll still want to do a preview to verify everything but at least you've got the big bulk operation completed.

Hope that helps!