Load balancing working, but failover on Opt1 not working

hoba

Can someone tell me if there is anyway to set the DNS for Opt1?

Please search, this has been answered countless times already.

leimrod

I did a search, and I came up with the solutions i've already implemented.

I've gone to System>General Setup>DNS Servers and set the DNS servers here (one for WAN, and one for Opt1) i've also disabled "Allow DNS server list to be overridden…"

Do I need to set up any static routes pointing the appropriate DNS server to the Opt1 connection?

my main problem I think is that both WAN connections are from the same ISP and in such share the same DNS servers. In the failover rules i've set the monitor as each of the routers gateways. When WAN goes down, Opt1 still reads as "online" in status>load balancer but I lose internet access.

Is there a way of tieing only one of the DNS server addresses to each WAN connection?

hessie

I've got a similar setup and simply used DNS-Servers outside my net for monitoring..

If you get 2 DNS-IP's provided, simply use the first for GW1 and the second for GW2..

Example:
Provider assigns 123.123.123.1 as first NS and 123.123.123.2 as secondary NS..
Use 123.123.123.1 on WAN1
123.123.123.2 on WAN2

Just make sure they are "outside", not inside or accessing the routers.. Use Internet-IP's.

leimrod

I don't see how this would change anything, because, as far as I understand it, as long as the IPs are unique to each WAN connection then failover should work. Am I wrong in this assumption?

sullrich

In addition to needing 2 unique IP's of the ISP you need to create static routes to force the packets out the correct gateway. This has been covered in previous threads and in the load balancing docs @ doc.pfsense.com

leimrod

This is the load balancing doc you are refering to: http://doc.pfsense.org/index.php/Multi-Wan/Load-Balancing

I've read through it numerous times and nowhere in it does it mention anything about static routes.

Could you just give me an example of how I should implement these static routes? Do I need to set one up for WAN and one for Opt1?

sullrich

Woops, scratch that. I forgot that we now add the static routes behind the scenes.

hoba

You only need a static route to the DNS-Server at OPT1. The DNS-Server at WAN is covered by the default gateway already. Make sure you use one DNS from WAN and one from OPT1 at system>general.

Oh, and btw, I already answered this question from you here: http://forum.pfsense.org/index.php/topic,3920.msg24880.html#msg24880 :P

leimrod

ok, thanks… thats working perfectly now with the static route set up to point Opt1 to the DNS server. Hoba, I think I got confused because later on in my original thread you told me to remove the static route, but this was because I had the DNS servers set up as my monitors.

All is working now perfectly.

It might be an idea to put a sticky at the top of this forum with the common questions that are asked (i.e. FTP access, failover, DNS setup...etc)

Or maybe add the detail about setting up a static route to the load balancer wiki?

hoba

@leimrod:

Or maybe add the detail about setting up a static route to the load balancer wiki?

I agree, we should add this to the doc and then create a new thread pointing to it and marking it sticky.

sai

I've added a paragraph "8.4 Setting up DNS for Load Balancing"
to http://doc.pfsense.org/index.php/Multi-Wan/Load-Balancing

Hope it is understandable.

hoba

Thanks sai!

sullrich

Nice work, thanks!