Load Balancing/Failover

Archived from groups: microsoft.public.win2000.dns (More info?)

Hi,

We have two servers. One that will be servicing students requests, and one
that is a passive failover. What we want to do is create one Host record,
say portal.example.edu. We want the DNS server to point to the main server,
but in the event of a failure, have the DNS record point to the secondary
server. Is there a way to do this?

Thanks

Archived from groups: microsoft.public.win2000.dns (More info?)

DS> Is there a way to do this?

No. The DNS is not a load balancing or a fault tolerance mechanism. It
is (amongst other things) merely a name->address mapping mechanism. To
achieve load balancing, you must operate in terms of IP datagram routing
or at the application level.

You may be told about round-robin resource record cycling. It often
comes up in response to questions like yours. However, "round-robin" is
not load balancing. It is a bodge that doesn't in fact achieve the
actual goals that people want to achieve. It doesn't achieve either
load balancing or fault tolerance.