Distributed Name Service (DNS) Management Operations Manual

DNS Architecture
Introducing Distributed Name Service
1–10 31258 Tandem Computers Incorporated
LOAD ($ altvol .ZDNS.LOAD). The load file is a command file that may be read
by DNSCOM to initially load the DNS database with the definitions of some
commonly used Tandem subsystems and their object types.
DBDDLS ($ altvol .ZDNS.DBDDLS). This is a Data Definition Language (DDL)
source file that describes the DNS database.
DNS Configurations Each DNS database is associated with a DNS configuration created with the
INITIALIZE DNS command. Each DNS configuration consists of:
DNS database files. Each DNS database consists of 15 key-sequenced files. The
files need not reside on the same disk volume.
A name manager process. Each DNS configuration has a name manager process.
The process name assigned to each name manager must be unique on each system.
Assigning a name to a name manager is discussed in “Initializing and Starting
DNS Configurations” in Section 3.
A name exporter process (optional). If name definitions are to be replicated from
or to the DNS database from other systems in your network, the configuration
must include a name exporter process. Like name managers, name exporters must
be assigned unique process names. Assigning a name to a name exporter is
discussed in “Initializing and Starting DNS Configurations” in Section 3.
A DNS configuration file. DNS uses the configuration file to catalogue
information about the configuration, such as the name of each database file, the
name of the name manager process, and the name of the name exporter process.
A queue file. The queue file acts as a buffer between the name manager process
and name exporter process.
The interactions between various elements of DNS are shown in Figure 1-5. One of the
major functions of DNS is replicating information about names from one node to
another. See Section 5, “How DNS Exports the Name Database,” for details on
replicating DNS names.