The Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) Traffic Management Steering Policies service is a critical component of domain name systems (DNS). Traffic Management Steering Policies service enables you to configure policies to serve intelligent responses to DNS queries, meaning different answers (endpoints) can serve for the query, depending on the logic that the customer defines in the policy. Traffic Management Steering Policies can account for the health of answers to provide failover capabilities, provide the ability to load balance traffic across multiple resources, and account for the location where the query was initiated to provide a simple, flexible, and powerful mechanism to efficiently steer DNS traffic.

Automatic failover policy

The failover traffic policy is automatically directed to a different endpoint when the service fails to respond. You can easily configure OCI Health Checks for external monitoring from vantage points around the globe.

A graphic depicting the flow of automatic failover.

Steps to set up automatic failover policy

  1. In the menu under Networking, click Traffic Management Steering Policies. Enter a name for the policy and set the TTL.

    A screenshot of the Create Traffic Management Steering Policy screen with the failover policy type selected.

  2. Define the answer pools. I created two pools: One Ashburn and one in Phoenix.

    A screenshot of the Answer Pools section of the previous screen, creating two pools.

  3. Define the priority of answers that are served in a policy.

    A screenshot of the Pool Priority section.

  4. Add a health check.

    A screenshot of the Attach Health Check section with details filled in.

  5. Enter the name of the domain to attach to the policy.

    A screenshot of the Attached Domains (Optional) section.

  6. Review the configuration of automatic failover.

    A screenshot of the Overview page of the policy narrative for the automatic failover.

    A screenshot of the Policy Answer Data screen.

Conclusion

Failover priority rules specify the priority of answers that are served in a policy. If the primary answer is unavailable, traffic is steered to the next answer in the list. A great way to test this process out yourself is with a 30-day free trial of OCI, which includes US$300 in credit and our Always Free services.

I hope that this blog helps you understand Traffic Management Steering Policies concepts in Oracle Cloud Infrastructure. If you have any questions regarding Traffic Management Steering Policies, post them in the comments.

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