A while ago I had a project to build a DNS management application for a client, which has since been refined and improved further, and finally released as “NamedManager” now that I’ve had time to re-do the documentation for a public audience.
NamedManager is an AGPL web-based DNS management system designed to make the adding, adjusting and removal of zones/records easy and reliable by a simple yet effective interface.
Rather than attempting to develop a new name server, NamedManager supports the tried and tested Bind name server and can integrate nicely into existing complex Bind configurations including servers with multiple views without clobbering custom configurations.
Configuring zone records with NamedManager.
It’s written in PHP 5 and uses a MySQL database for storing the DNS record information, which is then converted into Bind compatible configuration files and copied to the name servers, an act which ensures that any loss of the NamedManager application or database will not result in a loss of DNS services.
It’s a stable application, having been in some large production environments for over a year, although there’s certainly more work wanted on the application, such as the addition of IPv6 PTR records and improved UI around SRV and SPF record entry.
NamedManager includes an interface for tracking the sync status of the latest changes across all your name servers, as well as understanding the differences between internal only and publicly accessible name servers and generating the appropriate NS records for domains automatically.
An included daemon can (optional) watch the Bind name server logs and send them back to the web interface, so that you can watch all your name servers via an AJAX log interface to make it easier to watch for issues or debug queries.
Server status report – see if your hosts have synced DNS changes and are reporting logs.
Both forwards domains for IPv4 and IPv6 are supported, and IPv4 reverse domains are also supported (IPv6 reverse to come in future release), along with the ability to import Bind zone files (works for most, unless yours is too ugly/complex) into the application.
View of all the domains active on this DNS cluster with NamedManager.
For developers, NamedManager features a SOAP API which can be used to manage DNS records – this has been used to hook into other provisioning tools (eg: cloud instance management tools) to reduce manual effort for keeping records clean and tidy,
The code structure of NamedManager would make it possible to add support for additional name servers as desired, I would be keen to see support for PowerDNS and Amazon Route 53 as options in future – as always, patches welcome. ;-)
If you’re interested in checking it out, view the NamedManager project page here and follow the instructions to install from RPM, source tarball or SVN.