Sympl DNS for x.1 - Feature Discussion

The plan is to build what is in effect a drop-in replacement for sympl-dns, as it has limited functionality on most networks.

With that in mind, I’ll be using OctoDNS to handle the DNS uploading/downloading, as it supports most of the big DNS providers, but also build a tool so you can audit your DNS against what you have locally, so you know what (if anything) needs to be updated, allowing you to also use other services.

I’d be interested to hear what everyone thinks would be a good feature set, so far I have:

  • Audit publicly visible DNS records against local records
  • Basic sanitization of records locally (no CNAMES with IPs, etc.)
  • Only create DNS records for services that are live (if the record doesn’t already exist).
  • Create matching SRV records and similar to support client autoconfiguration.
  • The ability to define the public IP(s) of a server (like the local IPs are in config/ip at present) to support load balancing, reverse proxies, etc.
  • A hooks system to run scripts when DNS records are updated.

Comments and suggestions welcome!

In my case I’m using the Mythic Beasts hosted email, or have some services hosted elsewhere, so having a way to have some way to nicely deal with that situation would be useful.

Hi @smsm1, and welcome!

That’s a really good idea - being able to select templates for specific/popular services such as Mythic Beasts, G-Suite, and so on would be useful in a lot of situations.

Thanks.

Agree templates for popular services, with a plugin system to add more as required.

I was more thinking of ways to prevent Sympl changing certain sets of records, e.g. email by saying email is not hosted here, follow the DNS elsewhere.

Can you elaborate a little?

Something like “Copy the DNS for MX record from this other site” or “Don’t change these records”?

In terms of the set of records it would be all mail related DNS records such as MX, SPF, and DKIM.

I can see use cases for both copy these records and now manage them with Sympl; or to not touch them at all.

Either way, it the mail is hosted on an external service, then having a way to ensure that mails (e.g. crontab or WordPress) can be processed and pushed through to the external service.

Another case to cater for is subdomains hosted elsewhere for various reasons.