Cisco GSS 4400 Series advise please

[agent2007]

Hello,

I am new to these appliances and am trying to figure out a soltution that meets the following requirements.  Please help.

We have a requirement for a customer where they want to have DNS redundancy and I have some questions.  They want to have an active/active setup across 2 different sites so both DNS records should be live.

1.       Can gss meet that requirement?

2.       Is it possible to send traffic from certain IP addresses to site 1 and then all other IP’s to the site 2 and if one of the sites was to go down it would               automatically just send all traffic to the other?

3.       This domain is a sub-domain (for example test.ward.ie) and the customer will not want to move all the DNS records for ward.ie, Is this possible?

4.       Can it do DNS Global Site Selection

Also, what appliances are available for this?

Thanks a mill

[venkatkr · Accepted solution]

HI Mill,

Ideally you can contact your cisco reps and they can get you in touch with our PDI helpdesk to help you decide what device and configuration would be required to make this happen.

That said, i can give you few pointers.

GSS is a active active device. The GSS primary standby concept is only applicable for configuring the GSS. Only on the primary GSS you can have the GUI access. At any point, both GSS can respond to a A-Record for any domain configured.

The way you load balance the GSS is by the local D-proxy. The local d-proxy (your local dns server) will send/forward the request from the client to the GSS ip which it has. Some d-proxy's can do round robin.

Example.

There is GSS 1 and GSS 2. Client makes a request for www.help.cisco.com. The local DNS server gets it and he forwards this request to GSS 1 as GSS1 ip is configured on it.

GSS 1 gets the FQDN and finds out that there are two ip's configured for the name resolution.

site1 - www.help.cisco.com -- 1.1.1.2

site 2 -www.help.cisco.com-- 2.2.2.3

Now GSS by default does round robin and picks on ip and provide that back as the answer. You can configure various mechanism including , if site 1 goes down, then send the ip of site 2.

Hope this helps. Here's some documentation for quick reading

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/app_ntwk_services/data_center_app_services/gss4400series/v3.0/configuration/gui/gslb/guide/Intro.html

I did not understand your last question regarding DNS global site selection. What do you mean by that.

Finally, the GSS 4492R is the device name.

Thanks

VK

[agent2007]

Thanks for the reply.

You have answered my last question, basically I meant will it choose the best location for a DNS request which it does.  Can you answer question 2?  Is this possible?  I dont believe it is.

also one other question, do I need any other equipment to work with the GSS.  I read the following on a presentation

So to deploy Cisco, you have 3 options:

•A range of already EOL announced models (CSS 11500 Series)

•ACE module to insert into a Cisco Switch or Router

•For a standalone solution, there is only one option, the ACE 4710.

• …..and if you want GSLB, you need a separate appliance, the GSS 4400……

Can you comment on that please?

many thanks

[venkatkr · Accepted solution]

Hi,

Regarding hte second question, yes that is possible. We have a filter for source address on the GSS. You can specify a ip or a subnet and if it matches that, then the GSS will return the ip you want for that match.

so typically, the GSS is used in front end of  the infrastructure. The answer it returns is usually not the actual backend server. ITs usually a load balancer like CSS or the more popular ACE.

In the above setup, here's what happens.

client --- local dns server --- Request www.help.cisco.com---- GSS -----answers VIP ip of ACE  1.1.1.2

Now the clients goes to 1.1.1.2---- ACE VIP ----- Now behind the load balancer you can have multiple servers.

Hope this clarifies. Let me know if not. If it answers, please rate.

VK