How do I perform maintenance on a master DNS/DHCP (BIND9/ISC-DHCP) Ubuntu server?

[Sniperm4n]

Hi everyone,

I'm running non-GUI Ubuntu Server 12.04.2 LTS (64-bit) on my 2 DNS/DHCP servers. Both servers are running BIND9 9.8.1-P1 and ISC-DHCP-SERVER 4.1.ESV-R4-0ubuntu5.6. Please note that for DNS I'm running them in a master/slave configuration, and for DHCP they are running a failover configuration. Ideally, I'd like to perform maintenance on the master/primary first, and once it's back up and running, I'd like to then take care of the secondary/slave. Maintenance will consist of installing various updates and performing a restart. I'm uncertain how to gracefully bring each machine down without losing/interrupting service. Any advice is greatly appreciated!

Thanks,
-Snipe

[houstonbofh]

It should failover correctly when you just shut down one. And it is a good time to test that! But choose a good time where downtime will be less noticed.

[Sniperm4n]

I know that DNS/BIND9 will work just fine since my slave has all of the same zone files. It's the DHCP failover aspect that I was concerned with. I was under the impression that you had to use RNDC to set one of the servers to a partner-down state, but wasn't certain (I'm not a Linux System Admin by trade).