Hi, my router requires that I input two IPs for DNS servers.
Thus far I have been running TWO piholes on VMs to accommodate this.
But it's pretty annoying to have to manage 2 piholes.
Is there any way for a single pihole to answer queries against two IPs?
A single Pi-hole is indeed enough as your sole DNS resolver.
However, in a healthy and stable network environment, redundancy is preferred and a second DNS resolver resolver (for bulletproof ad-blocking, another Pi-hole) is preferred.
But again, one instance should be enough (but what happens if that goes down ? what will resolve your queries then ?)
(I personally run 3 Pi-holes but my network setup is very complex).
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I run my primary Pihole off of a Raspberry Pi 4 and my secondary off of a Pi Zero W. When I mess something up or the Pi 4 needs a reboot, you could hear the whole family moan and complain as my sole DNS server restarted. Now that I have a backup, not a single request is missed and all is quiet in the household.
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How exactly are you doing this? I have 2 pinholes running and in dhcp settings of plex both ips are listed. If primary goes down it takes hours to time out and the backup to take over. After many google searches this seems to be by design but not practical. How does one get seamless dns resolution no mater which dns server is offline?
There is something unusual about your DHCP settings. I have parallel Pi-Holes and the change is very fast (perhaps a second or so) when the one in use goes offline.
As an experiment, manually assign DNS to both Pi-Holes on a client (not via DHCP settings) and see if you get a different outcome.
My gateway has 2 fields for DNS. My primary Pi goes in 1. Secondary goes in 2. When one goes down, the other takes over. It's seamless as far as I can tell.
I've read that the way a request gets routed/which DNS handles the request can be pretty random. However, it seems to treat my Piholes like a primary and a backup. All requests are handled by the primary until it isn't available and then the backup takes over, doesn't miss a step.
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Can you not put the same IP pihole address into the 2 DNS Server fields?
Some routers do not allow this. If this is the case on a given router, sometimes you can put an unused IP address on your LAN range into the second field.
Nope, the router requires two different IPs for DNS servers.
Hard coded or dhcp if primary goes down secondary does not pick up. Resolution fails. Can't for the life of me get redundant dns.