Original author(s) Operating system | Written in C++ | |
Developer(s) PowerDNS Community, Bert Hubert Stable release 4.0.3 / January 17, 2017 (2017-01-17) Repository github.com/PowerDNS/pdns | ||
PowerDNS is a DNS server, written in C++ and licensed under the GPL. It runs on most Unix derivatives. PowerDNS features a large number of different backends ranging from simple BIND style zonefiles to relational databases and load balancing/failover algorithms. A DNS recursor is provided as a separate program.
Contents
History
PowerDNS was originally a commercial proprietary product. In November 2002, the source code was made public under the open-source GPL v2 license. In 2013, its performance serving ENUM records was compared against three other DNS servers.
Features
PowerDNS Authoritative Server (pdns_server) consists of a single core, and multiple dynamically loadable backends that run multi-threaded. The core handles all packet processing and DNS intelligence, while one or more backends deliver DNS records using arbitrary storage methods.
Zone transfers and update notifications are supported, and the processes can run unprivileged and chrooted. Various caches are maintained to speed up query processing. Run-time control is available through the pdns_control command, which allows reloading of separate zones, cache purges, zone notifications and dumps statistics in Multi Router Traffic Grapher / rrdtool format. Realtime information can also be obtained through the optional built-in web server.
There are many independent projects to create management interfaces for PowerDNS, including PowerAdmin, PDNSOps, PowerDNS on rails and JPower Admin and even a drupal module called PowerAdmin.
DNSSEC
The PowerDNS Authoritative Server supports DNSSEC as of version 3.0. While pre-signed zones can be served, it is also possible to perform online signing & key management. This has the upside of being relatively easy, but the downside that the cryptographic keying material is present on the servers itself (which is also true of any HTTPS server).
Recursor
PowerDNS Recursor (pdns_recursor) is a resolving DNS server, that runs as a separate process. The authoritative pdns_server can be configured to proxy recursive queries to the recursor, and optionally overlay authoritative zone data.
This part of PowerDNS is single threaded, but is written as if it were multi-threaded, by the use of Boost and the MTasker library, which is a simple cooperative multitasking library. It is also available as a standalone package.
It does not have to run a pdns_server process as a gatekeeper for pdns_recursor, if the goal is simply to provide caching/recursing/resolving nameservice as running pdns_recursor on its own is even more efficient than behind the authoritative component.
As of 2007, the Recursor is used by several of the largest Internet providers of the world, including AOL, Shaw Cable and Neuf Cegetel.
Support for DNSSEC validation was added to the recursor in version 4.0.