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Designate

Designate is the OpenStack service for providing multi-tenant managed DNS-as-a-Service (DNSaaS) that integrates with other OpenStack components and external Domain Name System (DNS) servers.

  • Authoritative DNS-as-a-Service for OpenStack clouds (DNS management)
  • Multi-tenant zone and record management via Application Programming Interface (API) and dashboard (DNS management)
  • Integration with OpenStack services such as Compute and Networking for dynamic DNS updates (cloud infrastructure integration)
  • Pluggable backends for common DNS servers like BIND9 and PowerDNS (DNS server integration)
  • Support for Representational State Transfer (REST) API, quotas, and high-availability deployments (infrastructure services)

More About Designate

Designate is the DNS-as-a-Service (DNSaaS) component of the OpenStack cloud platform, providing centralized, API-driven management of DNS zones and records for multi-tenant environments (DNS management). It addresses the need for automated, consistent DNS handling in Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) deployments where virtual machines, networks, and load balancers are created and destroyed programmatically.

At its core, Designate offers a RESTful API (API services) for creating, updating, and deleting DNS zones and resource records, with support for role-based access and multi-tenant isolation aligned with OpenStack identity services. It manages DNS data in a central database and uses pluggable backends (DNS server integration) to synchronize that data to one or more authoritative DNS servers such as BIND9 and PowerDNS, or to pool configurations that target multiple backends for redundancy.

The architecture includes a central service, worker processes, a producer/consumer pattern built on a message queue (infrastructure messaging), and an optional miniDNS component used in some deployment models. Designate integrates with OpenStack services such as Nova (compute), Neutron (networking), and Load-Balancing-as-a-Service (cloud networking) to provide dynamic DNS record creation when instances, floating Intrusion Prevention System (IPS), or load balancers are provisioned (cloud infrastructure integration). This allows automatic registration of hostnames and service endpoints in DNS, aligned with lifecycle events in the cloud.

Enterprises and service providers deploy Designate as part of private or public OpenStack clouds to centralize DNS administration, enforce DNS naming policies, and offer self-service DNS management to tenants (infrastructure services). Operators can define quotas for zones and records per project, configure pools of DNS servers for availability and geographic distribution, and monitor service health using OpenStack’s common tooling and logging mechanisms.

Designate supports the OpenStack Dashboard (Horizon) integration (cloud management), enabling users to manage zones and records through a web interface in addition to the API and command-line tools. The project follows OpenStack’s standard patterns for authentication via Keystone, messaging via supported message queues, and configuration via the shared configuration framework (cloud platform integration). It is positioned in an enterprise architecture as a DNS management and automation layer that aligns with OpenStack’s compute, networking, and identity services, and it interoperates with existing DNS infrastructure through its backend drivers.