SoftLayer Adds Geographically Redundant DNS to Its Set of Enterprise Class Features

August 25, 2008; 08:26 AM

DALLAS--SoftLayer now offers Anycast DNS (also called IP Anycast Routing) free to all customers using SoftLayer’s DNS servers. Anycast DNS is a high availability and geographically diverse advanced routing solution that allows multiple server destinations to share the same IP address and routes IP requests to the best destination based on network conditions. This enterprise-class feature increases uptime, provides exceptional opportunities for optimizing traffic flow, improves network performance, and maintains service redundancies. Previously, this functionality has not been available to organizations of all sizes as it is difficult to build in-house and very expensive to purchase from third party providers.

“We are very excited to offer a high availability DNS solution to the market. Its capabilities give our customers another level of reliability and an effective mechanism for maintaining business continuity,” said Jacob Linscott, SoftLayer’s Director of Information Systems.

Anycast DNS routing is available from all three SoftLayer data centers. All of SoftLayer’s resilient name servers have the feature enabled and offer real-time DNS record population.

How it works:

By allowing multiple destinations to share the same IP address, Anycast DNS routing permits DNS registration information to be mirrored on server clusters either locally, regionally, or globally. Requests for the IP address are routed to the closest destination with the highest availability, preventing requests from being routed to a server that is unavailable or experiencing unusually heavy traffic.

Key advantages include:

• Service Continuity—helps maintain uptime in the event of service interruptions
• Network Protection—provides a comprehensive network failover solution
• Disaster Recovery—allows critical services to be continuously maintained

About SoftLayer Technologies

Headquartered in Plano, Texas, SoftLayer delivers next-generation web hosting and on-demand data center services on a global basis from facilities located in Dallas, TX; Seattle, WA; and Washington, DC. Utilizing proprietary management tools coupled with the industry's first network-within-a-network topology, the company delivers unprecedented power and control to securely manage IT environments while providing unparalleled scalability. For more information please visit www.softlayer.com or call 866.398.7638.