Multiple A records in DNS

Website, Application, Performance DNS & Network
1

Hello all, just made a new account here.

My question is about using multiple IP addresses in DNS settings. My context is that I have two servers for the same domain - one in EU and another in USA. If I add the IP addresses of both servers in Cloudflare DNS settings, does it automagically direct user requests to the closest server?

On this support page I read that it will automatically round robin between the different IP addresses. Is there a way to change the setting so that it just sends it to the nearest (using any way it likes to measure “nearness”) server? Obviously I can only afford the free services at this time, but I am hoping that since Cloudflare DNS uses Anycast, this should be possible…

Cheers

2

Cloudflare’s anycast is only for anycasting to the nearest CF datacenter, so when you add multiple A records, it will only round-robin them, not direct them to the “closest” datacenter.

The only real way to do this is by using either your own geo-load balancing server, and point CF to the IP address it has, or using Cloudflare’s paid load balancing feature:
https://support.cloudflare.com/hc/en-us/articles/115000081911-Tutorial-How-to-Set-Up-Load-Balancing-Intelligent-Failover-on-Cloudflare

2 Likes
3

Hi Judge,

Thank you for getting back to me. If you check this page: https://support.cloudflare.com/hc/en-us/articles/200168916-Can-I-use-round-robin-DNS-entries- you will see that it is infact possible to add multiple addresses.

I am not sure if I am missing something really obvious…

4

This topic was automatically closed 30 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.