Articles

What is Multicloud DNS?

Don't let vendors lock you in to a solution which won't give you the uptime and performance which you need to make your customers happy. Multicloud DNS will keep your services up and running.

Oct 6th, 2022

Companies large and small have embraced multicloud architectures for multiple reasons such as redundancy, performance, and vendor agnosticism. Multicloud DNS should be considered for all of the reasons as well.

What is Multicloud?

Before we talk about multicloud DNS, it's important to define what we mean by "multicloud." Multicloud is not only putting workloads in several locations, including the public cloud. Multicloud is an operational methodology which implies that as workloads are distributed into more places, there must be a strategy and vision of how to manage it all as simply as possible.

Multicloud could be multiple private clouds, multiple public clouds, or a mixture of both. Most commonly it is viewed as multiple clouds with an on-premises presence as well. Again, though, it's not really about where your workloads live, it's about how you're managing them even though they're in different places, perhaps managed by different teams, with different processes and skillsets.

Currently, there's no way to just centrally manage multicloud architectures completely. We're becoming closer from a network perspective with technologies like Cisco ACI and VMware vSphere and NSX working in the cloud as well as on-premises, but this is just part of the challenge. We still have different security technology and practices necessary for different sites, we're still using baremetal, virtual machines, containers, and "serverless" in different ways. The multicloud vision has a way to go, but it's plain to see that vendors and analysts alike are starting to understand that the complexity of multicloud operations is a real stress for IT operations.

What is Multicloud DNS?

As mentioned in the first paragraph, multicloud DNS exists for similar reasons as multicloud workloads. Multicloud DNS means that we have two or more DNS services, likely cloud/external DNS providers perhaps mixed with an on-premises DNS service, which are authoritative for your domains (DNS zones). Of course, we have to take this a step further, because the key point of multicloud is that there's a focus on simplifying operations. So to truly achieve the key goals of multicloud DNS, you have to make it simple and you have to be able to give multiple services authority.

What are the key goals of multicloud DNS?

Redundancy

As we've mentioned in previous posts, DNS redundancy is absolutely necessary if you want to keep revenue generating services up and performant. It's not only about revenue, though, there are multiple pain points associated with DNS downtime:

  • Revenue loss due to service outage
  • Employees unable to work due to service outage
  • Tarnished reputation due to outage and perceived vulnerability to DDOS attacks

While DNS has some redundancy built-in, if there is an issue with connectivity, the built-in DNS redundancy isn't going to cut it. Want proof? Just check out some of the recent outages with Meta (Facebook), Cloudflare, or Dyn. In the Meta case, for example, a change was made to the BGP routing protocol, which caused a failure in communication. Meaning, this wasn't a DNS issue, but because of the routing issue, DNS couldn't be reached internally or externally.

If there had been redundant DNS services set up, or multicloud DNS, the downtime could have been avoided.

Performance

Users have come to expect performant services, both inside your company and outside. We as users have become so used to speedy web sites, speedy apps, and when something takes more than a few seconds to load, we're off to the next thing. Often times, that next thing is your competitor. By ensuring DNS is up and performant, ensuring we're using the right DNS service at the right time and in the right location, we can give our users the experience they've come to expect.

Vendor Agnosticism

What do we mean when we say vendor agnosticism? This is the ability to avoid vendor lock-in and therefore avoid paying obscene costs due to that lock-in. Many vendors make it their business model to make your biggest reason for sticking with them to be that it's just too hard to switch solutions. Once they've reached a particular market share, they create the most proprietary products to keep you renewing because that's just easier.

Take Infoblox as an example. Infoblox has about a 70% share for the DDI market. It makes sense that they would create the most closed system possible to try to make it impossible for you to move away. With Infoblox solutions, Infoblox must be the authoritative service. So how can they create a multicloud DNS solution where multiple services are authoritative? The answer is they can't. You could do it on your own, maintain it yourself, but with all that manual work you're destined to run into human error issues especially when multiple teams are involved.

Making it Simple and Easy

The only way to create a true multicloud DNS solution is to use an overlay solution which allows you to automate the configuration of redundant DNS services, and also allows for multiple services to be authoritative over DNS zones. Micetro makes it simple and easy to manage DNS redundancy in just this way. Not to mention, it's a non-disruptive solution which means you can deploy it without disruption, and even take it out without disruption (but we're sure you won't want to).

If you're interested to see how this works, check out our latest whitepaper on xDNS Redundancy from Micetro. Prefer to watch your content? Hear from our lead xDNS developer, Eggi, on why we implemented it and how to use it.