Modern Nameserver Technology
The PowerDNS Nameserver is a modern, advanced and high performance authoritative-only nameserver. It is written from scratch and conforms to all the relevant DNS standards documents. PowerDNS is Open Source.

Backend Architecture
The PowerDNS Nameserver utilizes, a flexible backend architecture can access DNS information from any data source. This includes file formats, Bind zone files, relational databases or LDAP directories.

If you have specific needs for your DNS infrastructure then you can use the Backend Developers Kit to write the 'glue' between PowerDNS and your data or logic.

PowerDNS is by default configured to serve all information directly from a database, which results in unmatched maintainability of your DNS information.

No reloads - instant updates

By connecting directly to a database, no 'reloading' is needed. Changes committed to the database are effective immediately. If required, PowerDNS can also read plain zonefiles from disk.

Operating Systems: Available for FreeBSD, Linux, Mac OS X and Windows 2000/XP.

Standards Compliance: Conforms to RFC 1035, RFC 1034.

Protocols: Supports DNS queries on both UDP and TCP. Implements the AXFR zone transfer protocol. Can listen on both IPv4 and IPv6 endpoints.

DNS Record Types: Can answer questions for A, AAAA, CNAME, MX, NAPTR, NS, SOA, and TXT records.

Database support: MySQL, PostgreSQL, Oracle 8i, Oracle 9i, IBM DB2. Support for any ODBC datasource on Windows 2000/XP, including Microsoft SQLServer.

Server Monitoring: Performance statistics can be queried periodically. Built-in webserver shows realtime performance and statistics information.