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Create a DNS load balancing zone

Contributors netapp-aherbin netapp-barbe netapp-dbagwell netapp-ahibbard
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You can create a DNS load balancing zone to facilitate the dynamic selection of a LIF based on the load, that is, the number of clients mounted on a LIF. You can create a load balancing zone while creating a data LIF.

Before you begin

The DNS forwarder on the site-wide DNS server must be configured to forward all requests for the load balancing zone to the configured LIFs.

The Knowledgebase article How to set up DNS load balancing in Cluster-Mode on the NetApp Support Site contains more information about configuring DNS load balancing using conditional forwarding.

About this task

  • Any data LIF can respond to DNS queries for a DNS load balancing zone name.

  • A DNS load balancing zone must have a unique name in the cluster, and the zone name must meet the following requirements:

    • It should not exceed 256 characters.

    • It should include at least one period.

    • The first and the last character should not be a period or any other special character.

    • It cannot include any spaces between characters.

    • Each label in the DNS name should not exceed 63 characters.

      A label is the text appearing before or after the period. For example, the DNS zone named storage.company.com has three labels.

Step

Use the network interface create command with the dns-zone option to create a DNS load balancing zone.

If the load balancing zone already exists, the LIF is added to it. For more information about the command, see the ONTAP command reference.

The following example demonstrates how to create a DNS load balancing zone named storage.company.com while creating the LIF lif1:

network interface create -vserver vs0 -lif lif1 -home-node node1
-home-port e0c -address 192.0.2.129 -netmask 255.255.255.128 -dns-zone storage.company.com