Hosted DNS Requirements

Server Requirements

A host may provide either a dedicated hardware server, or a virtual server. The following requirements apply:

Common Requirements

Dedicated (hardware) server

• Dell PowerEdge (R240, R340 or similar)
• Hardware RAID controller, eg. PERC H310
• Two disks, to be used in RAID-1 mode
• iDRAC enterprise, for out-of-band access and OS installation (note that iDRAC express is NOT suitable)

Virtual Server

• A fully- virtualised server in which a Linux operating system can be installed. Note that container technology, such as Docker, LXC, etc is not acceptable
• Web-based out-of-band access
• Must allow us to mount Linux installation media in ISO format, and boot from this media
• Dedicated resources
• Resources such as CPUs and RAM must NOT be dynamically allocated. The server must be assigned fixed resources, so that there is no degradation of service during operation.
• Low-latency storage
• The storage should be provided by locally attached spinning disks or solid-state drives. It should NOT be mounted over a network (eg. NFS)

 Network Requirements

The server will be configured with at least 2 interfaces:

• The first interface will be used for OS installation, configuration and management. We will require a publicly routed IPv6 address for it. A publicly routed IPv4 address may be optionally provided, but isn’t necessary.
• The second interface will be used to provide DNS service. It will require an IPv6 address and an IPv4 address. These addresses don’t need to be publicly routed, because they will only be used for BGP peering with the host’s router or routers.
• If the server is a dedicated Dell server, then its iDRAC interface will require a publicly routed IPv4 address. Note that we cannot use IPv6 for the iDRAC interface, because iDRACs don’t have IPv6 ACL functionality.