Alcatel-Lucent VitalQIP Technology White Paper page 17

Getting records from DNS into VitalQIP
In this design, Domain Controllers, MS-DHCP servers, and perhaps Windows 2003 stat-
ic clients all put records into DNS: A records, PTR records, CNAME records, and SRV
records. This data needs to be in the VitalQIP database as well, so they can be man-
aged and so that VitalQIP can perform DNS Generation when needed. For MS-DNS, this
process is performed by the qip-syncexternal CLI command. In brief, this CLI requests a
zone transfer from a particular DNS server, compares the contents of that zone or zones
with the VitalQIP database and updates the database when necessary. Because it works
using standard AXFR zone transfers, it does not require Alcatel-Lucent DNS. Almost all
DNS servers, including all Microsoft and Alcatel-Lucent DNS versions, support AXFR
zone transfer and therefore work with qipsyncexternal. This CLI can be run from any
VitalQIP client or server that is on the "allow-transfer" list of the DNS server and has the
VitalQIP CLI utilities, as well as the required Sybase or Oracle client installed.
The qip-syncexternal CLI must run periodically, at least once before each DNS Genera-
tion to that DNS server, either automatically or manually. The time between qip-syncex-
ternal and DNS Generation needs to be kept to a minimum so that the time window for
loss of dynamic updates is as small as possible. This can be done by:
You might want to run qip-syncexternal more often than DNS Generation, so that the
VitalQIP GUI information remains correct. However, note that qip-syncexternal can put
a considerable load on both DNS and the VitalQIP database when it is run frequently for
large zones.
Alcatel-Lucent | Integration of VitalQIP® with Microsoft Windows 2003 Networking/Active Directory
Performing the DNS Generation via the qip-dnsupdate CLI rather than from the
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GUI or via Scheduled Automatic Update – a batch file can call the qip-syncexternal
CLI and then call the qip-dnsupdate CLI immediately afterwards. This batch file can
be run by a scheduler, no more than once per day and preferably less.
Having a "prednsuserexitfgs" user exit configured on the File Generation server to
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run qipsyncexternal automatically at the beginning of each DNS Generation
Running qip-syncexternal manually before each push.
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