International Business Machines Corporation
DNS Resolution of internal tenant-specific domain addresses in a multi-tenant computing environment

Abstract:

A method and associated systems for a multi-tenant DNS mechanism. A multi-tenant computing environment hosts multiple private overlay networks, each of which comprises one tenant's domain. A multi-tenant DNS agent receives a DNS request to resolve a domain address located within the multi-tenant environment. The agent examines a special record within the request to determine whether the request requires resolving the domain address to an internal tenant-specific network identifier within a tenant's private network. The agent then forwards the request to a DNS server, notifying the server whether the requested address resolution is tenant-specific. If the request is not tenant-specific, the server performs a conventional DNS lookup. But if the request is tenant-specific, the DNS server instead performs a lookup into a tenant-specific local database that allows the domain address to be resolved to an internal address visible only within the multi-tenant computing environment.