OpenStack Summit November 2013

DNS is something everyone who uses any Internet service uses and often doesn't give much though to. DNS is a service that uses a distributed database to provide a mapping of IP addresses to domain names and hosts to access resources on the Internet (and internal networks). Without DNS, maintaining lookup data would be a difficult endevor.

With cloud environments, including Openstack, there is an obvious need for a DNS service. The project that intends to provide DNS needs for Openstack is Designate.

Designate is a an Openstack-inspired DNS as-a-service project. It is intended to be used to provide a DNS service from the entry point of creating, updating, maintaining and deleting DNS data using the Designate API, to providing a means to update any number of DNS server backends.

Designate is a modular project, allowing for the use of the DNS serveror backend database for storage of DNS data. Designate provides a RESTful API the provides functionality that one would expect to find with any Openstack project which can be used by customers be it front-end interaction by users or by other projects that require DNS.

Designate also has service for listening to Nova and Neutron notifications to make it possible those services to be the source of DNS modifications through Designate.

Designate is an ideal project to use for developing DNS as a service for an organization, and HP in particular has based their generally available DNSaaS product on Designate.

This discussion will provide an overview of Designate as well as in-depth discussion of the various components such as:

* Designate processes and configuration

* How Designate allows multiple DNS server backends and creating new backends

* How Designate allows backend database storage

* The Designate API