In this chapter, we took at look at the more common alternative nameservers to the default BIND. Because we consider nameserver diversity a best practice, we considered these alternatives from the perspective of using them in tandem with BIND or with each other, as opposed to deciding between them.
Of the nameservers we looked at, PowerDNS, NSD, and KnotDNS look to be the easiest drop-in replacements for BIND. PowerDNS is attractive because of its ability to automagically add new domains from trusted masters a way to more easily import large numbers of zones, and the versatility to be obtained from combining multiple, programmable backends.
Knot DNS' dynamically scriptable configuration took a while to get my head around, but it's powerful and lends itself well to complex environments and portfolios.
PowerDNS, NSD, and Knot have all done well to simplify DNSSEC...