2025-11-22 –, Breakout Room
A practical review of various DNS management practices, ranging from manual configuration and writing your own zone files, to using provider control panels, tools like OctoDNS and DNSControl, and infrastructure-as-code approaches such as Terraform. It also covers custom scripting techniques that interact directly with DNS provider APIs. Each method is evaluated in terms of maintainability, suitability for different environments, and how it integrates with modern infrastructure management workflows. The session concludes with a look at how I use a simple Python module to create a transparent and adaptable alternative workflow.
I'll share my journey exploring DNS as Code using Python, from the early days of editing named.conf and zone files directly on nameservers—with fond memories of working with BIND and PowerDNS—to evaluating libraries and tools like OctoDNS, StackExchange's DNSControl, and Terraform. Along the way, I’ll explain why I ultimately prefer using Python to interact directly with providers such as Metaname and Namecheap.
You’ll see a practical DNS-as-Code workflow in action: managing zone files in Git, automating updates via provider APIs, and maintaining clarity and control without unnecessary complexity. Whether you're managing a handful of personal domains or supporting production infrastructure, this session offers tools, patterns, and perspective to bring DNS firmly under code-based management.
Intermediate
John is a sysadmin, DevOps engineer, and startup supporter who likes making things work, preferably from a terminal window. For him, the year of the Linux desktop was 1998, and once he’d set up his first web server, there was really no going back. After dabbling with bash, Perl, Tcl, Ruby, Forth, and other languages best left to history, he has now decided to dabble with Python.