A new version of BIND

I saw on the SANS log today that the ISC is starting work on BIND10. A list of the new stuff can be found here. A couple of those items are very interesting to me. Specifically the Modularity and Clustering items.

Modularity:
...the selection of a variety of back-ends for data storage, be it the current in-memory database, a traditional SQL-based server, an embedded database engine or back-ends for specific applications such as a high performance, pre-compiled answer database.
Which makes me think of eDirectory backed DNS. Novell has had this for ages with NetWare, and from what I recall it was based on BIND. But... BIND8. BIND10 would formalize this in the linux base, which would further allow Novell to publish a more 'pure' eDir-integrated BIND.

Clustering:
run on multiple but related systems simultaneously, using a pluggable, open-source architecture to enable backbone communications between individual members of the cluster. These coordination services would enable a server farm to maintain consistency and coherence.
This is exactly what AD-integrated DNS and the DNS on NetWare has been doing for over 8 years now. Glad to see BIND catch up.

The big thing about using a database of some kind as the back-end for DNS is that you no longer have to create Secondary servers and muck about with Zone Transfers. For domains that change on a second by second basis, such as an AD DNS domain with dynamic updates enabled and thousands of computers during morning power-on, it is entirely possible for a BIND secondary-server to be missing many, many DNS updates. Microsoft has known about this issue, which is why they have their own directory-integrated DNS service.

This also shows just how creaky the NetWare DNS service really is. That's based on BIND8 code, which is now over 10 years old. Very creaky.

I'm looking forward to BIND10. It is a needed update that addresses DNS as it is done today, and would better enable BIND to handle large Active Directory domains.