Generic DNS Server Controller

Micetro by Men&Mice manages DNS servers. Native ISC BIND DNS and Windows DNS is supported. As a result of an increase in other DNS servers showing up in production environments, as well as DNS offered as a service by Cloud providers, from Version 6.7 of Micetro, new functions have been added to the DNS Server Controller. This makes the Controller much more flexible and enables Micetro to communicate with such new DNS server types.

How to install and configure the Generic DNS Server Controller:

  1. Install:

  • On Windows, run the Controller installer (x32 or x64 - depending on the OS version). There is no special Generic Controller installer - just use the normal Controller installer.

  • On Unix run the Controller installer with the parameter --generic-dns-controller.

  1. Install a script interpreter. We recommend using Python as we provide example connector scripts for Python (2.7.x).

  2. Add the GenericDNSScript XML tag to the preferences.cfg file. If the preferences.cfg file is not present, please create it.

Note

On Windows 2008/2012 R2 the preferences.cfg file is located under the hidden directory C:ProgramDataMen and MiceDNS Server Controller

  1. Following an example config for the python interpreter and a connector script located on the C drive in the scripts sub-directory:

1<GenericDNSScript value="c:\python27\python.exe c:\scripts\genericDNS.py" />

The genericDNS.py script implements the generic API and interfaces with the DNS server itself.

  1. Login to the M&M Management Console and add the new generic DNS server. Select as Server Type “Generic”. The name and optional IP address must point to the machine that runs the Generic DNS Server Controller.

Limitations

Reading, modifying zone/server options, reading logs, clearing cache, controlling the server itself is not possible by the API yet. Depending on the connector script, only master zones are currently supported. That means no slave zones or special zones like forward or stub zones are supported for Amazon Route53, but slave zones are supported for Configuring PowerDNS.

Of course, the connector script could interface with a slave zone and return an error when Central tries to update the zone. However, the zone will show up as zone of the type “Master” in the M&M Suite. In other words, everything else than reading/writing/updating master zones and their zone data is currently not supported.

Available Connector Scripts

Amazon Route53: see Configuring Amazon Route53.

PowerDNS with MySQL database backend: see Configuring PowerDNS.