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| Note |
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ImportantTo set up a supported virtual appliance as an IB-FLEX, you must first define the hardware type of the virtual appliance as IB-FLEX before you configure it. Depending on the platform or environment in which you are installing IB-FLEX, you can define the hardware_-type parameter to IB-FLEX during the cloud-init process, or you can manually set the hardware type using the set hardware-type CLI command. For more information, see set hardware-type. |
Limitations of IB-FLEX
It is not compatible with the traditional node-based licensing and it supports capacity based licensing only.
An IB-FLEX instance will not start if you do not configure the required minimum level of resources.
The resources assigned to IB-FLEX for cores and memory must be equal to or exceed the minimum designated values for the platform. For more information about IB-FLEX platforms, see About IB-FLEX Instances and Platform Settings below.
IB-FLEX does not support DNS64 on appliances running NIOS version 8.2.0.
IB-FLEX on AWS does not support ADP and DCA features.
To effectively use the IB-FLEX Grid Master Candidate, it is mandatory to install FLEX Grid Activation license / FLEX Grid Activation for Managed Services license, on the Grid Master.
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For more information about installing IB-FLEX in the VMware environment, see Deploying vNIOS Appliances on VMware.
For information about installing IB-FLEX in the OpenStack environment, see Deploying vNIOS for KVM in OpenStack Using Elastic Scaling.
About IB-FLEX Instances and Platform Settings
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IB-FLEX Platform Resource Specification
Resource Type | Allowed Range of Values | Recommended Value | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
Virtual NUMA Nodes | 1 | 1 | Single virtual CPU socket |
Disk Size | 250 GB | 250 GB | Fixed size virtual disk |
The table below provides information about the IB-FLEX platform and various platform settings:
Total Resource Usage for Different Use Cases
Intended Use | Total CPU | Total Virtual Memory GB (Without Software ADP) | Total Virtual Memory GB (With Software ADP) | Database Object Count | Grid Master Capable |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Small Authoritative DNS | 4 | 8 | 10 | 100,000 | No |
Medium Authoritative DNS | 8 | 16 | 22 | 600,000 | Yes |
Large Authoritative DNS | 16 | 32 | 40 | 5,000,000 | Yes |
Recursive DNS (without acceleration) | 6 | 14 | 18 | 200,000 | Yes |
Large Recursive DNS (without acceleration) | 14 | 28 | 36 | 2,000,000 | Yes |
Small Grid Master | 10 | 18 | NA | 1,000,000 | Yes |
Medium Grid Master | 12 | 22 | NA | 2,000,000 | Yes |
Large Grid Master | 16 | 32 | NA | 16,000,000 | Yes |
Small Recursive DNS (with acceleration) | 10 | 12 | 20 | 100,000 | No |
Medium Recursive DNS (with acceleration) | 16 | 20 | 28 | 100,000 | No |
Large Recursive DNS (with acceleration) | 26 | 30 | 38 | 100,000 | No |
Large Grid Master (with acceleration) | 20 | 38 | NA | 16,000,000 | Yes |
Note the following about IB-FLEX:
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When you enable virtual DNS cache acceleration on the IB-FLEX, the appliance acts as a high-speed DNS caching-only name server. This feature provides DNS cache acceleration support for recursive UDP DNS queries on the IB-FLEX. The DNS cache acceleration feature is bundled with the Tiered licensing. When you install this license, you are entitled to use the DNS cache acceleration feature on IB-FLEX.
IB-FLEX supports RPZ, but the response for RPZ queries are not cached by the DNS cache accelerator. Instead, these queries are bypassed to the host and you can configure cache expiry period for RPZ queries. Note that the maximum cache lifetime for DNS cache acceleration on IB-FLEX is set to 300 seconds if the RPZ license is installed.
You can also use Elastic Scaling to pre-provision DNS cache acceleration on IB-FLEX. IB-FLEX supports Intel x86_64 systems with IOMMU, Hugepages processors, virtio-net, and Intel 82599 10 G NIC and SRIOV with Intel 82599 ethernet controllers for DNS cache acceleration.
You can configure DNS cache acceleration on IB-FLEX using the Grid Manager or API. To view accelerated cache details, you can either log in to Grid Manager, or use CLI commands, or Infoblox API. If the tiered license usage is exceeded then a message is displayed in the Grid Manager. A warning message is displayed on the Grid Manager, if the QPS is going over the threshold on these platforms based on Tiered license installed.
Infoblox supports Auto Scaling that contains OpenStack packages to automatically scale the required number of resources based on your application. For more information, refer to Auto Scaling for Virtual DNS Cache Acceleration. For detailed information about configuring DNS Cache Acceleration, see Configuring DNS Cache Acceleration.
Reports for IB-FLEX
Infoblox supports a selected set of reports on IB-FLEX. To view all available reports, from the Reporting tab, select the Dashboards tab. The table below lists all the supported reports for IB-FLEX. For information about how to create and manage user-defined reports, see Infoblox Reporting and Analytics.
Supported Reports for IB-FLEX
DNS Reports | Security (DNS) Reports | System Reports |
|---|---|---|
DNS Query Rate by Query Type | DNS Top RPZ Hits | SPLA Grid Licensing Features Enabled |
DNS Query Rate by Member | DNS Top RPZ Hits by Client | CPU Utilization Trend |
DNS Daily Query Rate by Member | DNS RPZ Hits Trend By Mitigation Action | Memory Utilization Trend |
DNS Daily Peak Hour Query Rate by Member | ||
DNS Replies Trend | ||
DNS Cache Hit Rate Trend | ||
DNS Top Requested Domain Names | ||
DNS Top NXDOMAIN / NOERROR (no data) | ||
DNS Top Clients | ||
DNS Top Timed-Out Recursive Queries | ||
DNS Response Latency Trend | ||
DNS Top SERVFAIL Errors Sent | ||
DNS Top SERVFAIL Errors Received | ||
DNS Object Count Trend for Flex Grid License | ||
DNS Effective Peak Usage Trend for SPLA Grid License |