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41 Posts
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August 2nd, 2016 00:00
Smartconnect zone name -> IP
Hi all,
Instead of using DNS server for resolve SmartConnect zone name to service IP, can I use hosts file on client for this? if it can, please send to me doccuments for this content! thank for all!
Best Regards,
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AdamFox
254 Posts
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August 2nd, 2016 07:00
No. SmartConnect relies on DNS calls to distribute IP addresses. If you use the host file on a client, you will always connect to the IP that is in the hosts file. If you mount the service IP, you will always connect to the lowest logical node number (where the SmartConnect service runs). If you use static hosts entries, it is up to you to manually balance the front-end. If you have a small # of clients, that may work. But as the # of clients increases, it becomes less practical which is why SmartConnect exists.
You can point your client's DNS client to the SmartConnect Service IP. That will resolve properly. However, it will only resolve the SmartConnect zone names so, for example, if you have a UNIX client that usually relies on its hosts file, you would make sure that it always checks the hosts file first, then fall back to DNS. How this is done will depend on your flavor of UNIX, but many use a nsswitch.conf file to do this. Windows may have its own way of doing this as well but I don't know that off the top of my head.
umichklewis
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1.2K Posts
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August 2nd, 2016 05:00
You want to avoid using the hosts file, if you wish to leverage automated load-balancing and failover. The reason Isilon uses SmartConnect is to allow clients to resolve to various nodes for both load-balancing (balancing clients between nodes) and high-availability (avoiding failed nodes).
If you only use IP addresses, how will a client know when a node is down? This is why DNS is critical.
Let us know if that helps!
Karl