One of my client runs dedicated NS1 and NS2 to host more than 3000+ domains. Recently they upgraded their servers to latest Dual Core Dual AMD server with CentOS 5.0 and BIND server.
By default BIND / named will try to determine the number of CPUs present and create one thread per CPU. If it is unable to determine the number of CPUs, a single worker thread will be created. However due to some reason the BIND server failed to automatically utilize all of the system's available CPUs. So how do you force DNS Server to take advantage of multiple CPUs under CentOS Linux?
After a little investigation, named man page pointed out me in right direction ~ -n #CPU option, which creates #cpus worker threads to take advantage of multiple CPUs.
Force BIND DNS Server to take advantage of multiple CPUs
In order to enable multiple CPU open /etc/sysconfig/named file under CentOS / RHEL / Fedora Linux:
# vi /etc/sysconfig/named
To force bind to take advantage of 4 CPUs, add / modify as follows:
OPTIONS="-n 4"
Save and close the file. Restart named service:
# /etc/init.d/named restart
A note about Debian / Ubuntu Linux user
If you are a Debian / Ubuntu Linux modify /etc/defaults/bind9 file:
$ sudo vi /etc/defaults/bind9
Append config line:
OPTIONS="-n 4"
Please note append -n 4 to the end of other options (if any), for example:
OPTIONS="-4 -6 -n 4"
Save and close the file. Restart BIND server:
$ sudo /etc/init.d/bind9 restart
More more information read named man page.
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