OT - Small DNS "appliances" for remote offices.

[alter3d at alter3d.ca (Peter Kristolaitis)]

Not "industrial grade", but Raspberry Pis are pretty great for this kind 
of low-horsepower application.  Throw 2 at each site for redundancy and 
you have a low-powered, physically small, cheap, dead silent, easily 
replaceable system for ~$150 per site.   Same idea as the Soekris -- 
just ship out replacements instead of trying to repair -- but even cheaper.

Between having 2 (or more) at each site, plus cross-site redundancy via 
anycast, it would be pretty robust (and cheap enough that you could have 
cold-spares at each site).



On 02/18/2015 09:28 AM, Ray Van Dolson wrote:
> Hopefully not too far off topic for this list.
>
> Am looking for options to deploy DNS caching resolvers at remote
> locations where there may only be minimal infrastructure (FW and Cisco
> equipment) and limited options for installing a noisier, more power
> hugnry  servers or appliances from a vendor.  Stuff like Infoblox is
> too expensive.
>
> We're BIND-based and leaning to stick that way, but open to other
> options if they present themselves.
>
> Am considering the Soekris net6501-50.  I can dump a Linux image on
> there with our DNS config, indudstrial grade design, and OK
> performance.  If the thing fails, clients will hopefully not notice due
> to anycast which will just hit another DNS server somewhere else on the
> network albeit with additional latency.  We ship out a replacement
> device rather than mucking with trying to repair.
>
> There's also stuff like this[1] which probably gives me more horsepower
> on my CPU, but maybe not as reliable.
>
> Maybe I'm overengineering this.  What do others do at smaller remote
> sites?  Also considering putting resolvers only at "hub" locations in
> our MPLS network based on some latency-based radius.
>
> Ray
>
> [1] http://www.newegg.com/Mini-Booksize-Barebone-PCs/SubCategory/ID-309