DEVOPSdigest

NS1 unveiled Private DNS, a new enterprise solution that unlocks the infrastructure performance, automation and scale advantages already used by the largest Internet companies.

Private DNS is self-hosted and ideal for organizations that are modernizing their application infrastructure and embracing everything from clouds to containers.

Organizations are undergoing widespread digital transformation, infrastructure automation and application modernization. New, highly distributed and dynamic applications are created by agile DevOps teams and delivered through a diverse mix of on-premise, public and private clouds, content delivery networks (CDN) and microservices platforms. At the same time, years of technical debt — including that created by homegrown or traditional appliance-based DNS solutions — hold back enterprise modernization initiatives by hindering automation, performance and scaling.

NS1’s next generation Private DNS is the only DNS infrastructure solution designed from the ground up for modern application delivery. It can help eliminate decades of technical debt and dramatically reduce manual processes and inefficiencies that increase costs and slow application and network changes. Private DNS delivers fine-grained and automated traffic routing for the best application experiences; an API-first approach for rapid global change propagation and high-velocity application and infrastructure automation; vendor-agnostic DNS load balancing; and service discovery at cloud scale — all critical for successful modern enterprise application delivery.

“DNS plays a vital role in modernizing the application delivery stack, yet there has been a glaring lack of DNS solutions designed to work in increasingly automated enterprise infrastructure and complex hybrid environments,” said Kris Beevers, co-founder and CEO of NS1. “NS1’s Managed DNS platform is already used by the largest, most trafficked internet and cloud companies in the world. Private DNS delivers those same next generation DNS advantages in a self-hosted solution to accelerate transformation of the legacy stacks of enterprises.”

Benefits of NS1’s Next Generation Private DNS in the Enterprise

- Control and Automatically Optimize Traffic Performance – Enterprise networks are becoming more complex and widely distributed, requiring advanced traffic management capabilities to ensure availability and performance. NS1’s data-driven platform tracks the availability and status of all the application points of presence across the enterprise then quickly and automatically reacts to changes. The unique Filter Chain provides an easy and flexible way to optimize routing decisions, resulting in more reliable and responsive applications.

- Dynamic Infrastructure and Autoscaling – A primary advantage of cloud infrastructure, both private and public, is its ability to auto-scale in response to demand. This empowers modern enterprises to quickly spin up new services and capacity to dramatically improve user experiences. Such dynamic change requires a DNS platform that supports high API call rates and fast change propagation, neither of which can be facilitated by traditional DNS systems. NS1’s Private DNS delivers a 10X improvement in API capacity and reduces propagation times from days or hours to just seconds.

- Service Discovery at Cloud Scale – As organizations deploy applications into dynamic, cloud-based environments, they need an effective service discovery mechanism to connect new application instances to other applications and users. NS1’s Private DNS ensures that your DNS moves at high velocity to manage discovery of services atop this globally available, canonical service discovery protocol, supporting the scale and performance requirements of modern infrastructure while seamlessly integrating with existing applications.

- DevOps Ready – An “API first” architecture allows DevOps teams to programmatically integrate DNS changes into their CI/CD deployment processes and tool stack, including Terraform and Ansible. This eliminates the need to send change request tickets to DNS administrators, and is just one of the many benefits unlocked by automation.

- Cloud Native and Built for Microservices – Traditional platforms are not designed to meet the autoscaling and performance needs of dynamic infrastructure. Private DNS has a modular architecture comprising components that are packaged for deployment into Docker containers. This deployment model reduces resource consumption, enables easy, high-velocity change management, and unlocks more flexible scaling.

- DNS Global Server Load Balancing – Private DNS enables enterprises to intelligently manage workloads across distributed data centers and virtual private clouds. Its open data feeds enable Private DNS to track availability and workloads at every facility and intelligently shift traffic to ensure the best application performance and capacity utilization. This open, vendor-agnostic approach delivers global server load balancing (GSLB) across multi-vendor, heterogenous data center and cloud infrastructures.

- Modernization Without Downtime – Capable of supporting both modern and legacy systems, NS1’s Private DNS provides traffic management controls that enable easy and stable migration to new infrastructure. By moving fractions of traffic at a time to new cloud or hybrid infrastructure, Private DNS reduces the risk of service interruption and compromised performance.

- Single DNS Platform and Integration for Simplified Management – Private DNS is built for modern infrastructure but at the same time fully supports legacy environments. Enterprises can choose to standardize and train their teams to use the management GUI or the API, or to interface with the NS1 platform via the tools they already use to manage their server, storage and networking.

“NS1's Private DNS is a welcome addition to the enterprise DNS landscape. Organizations need to stop chipping away on isolated instances of technical debt, and upgrade infrastructure elements that can unlock and accelerate sweeping digital change to remain competitive in today’s digital economy,” said Brandon Butler, Senior Research Analyst, Network Infrastructure, IDC. “DNS is a critical foundational element to not just the internet, but any connected enterprise application or service. Modernizing DNS to deliver an API-first platform for automation and innovation, and advanced traffic management capabilities to boost performance and reliability, can deliver a broad reduction in technical debt and pave the way for large leaps in enterprise digital transformation.”