Redundant DNS at Home? Here's How This Setup Delivers VPN, Privacy, and Peace of Mind

If you're tinkering with your home network and wondering whether having a robust DNS setup is worth the effort — the answer is: yes… and it can also be a lot of fun. One user recently shared their full‑scale home network build around redundancy, privacy, and VPN integration. I walked through what they did and what you can take away—whether you're a hardcore home‑lab enthusiast or just someone looking to make their DNS more resilient. ## What the setup looks like Let's start with a quick overview of the architecture. The user has: A router (in this case a Ubiquiti) acting as the primary DNS front for all clients. Two (or more) servers running Pi‑hole + Unbound on small form‑factor hardware (Raspberry Pis). One is "active", one is "standby". DNS set to recursive (via Unbound), meaning the servers go straight to root DNS servers rather than relying purely on upstream resolvers. A floating (virtual) IP via Keepalived so when one server fails the other takes over automatically. All home traffic routed through a VPN (in this case via ProtonVPN) so even those root DNS lookups are anonymised from the ISP. No caching happening at Pi‑hole level—they rely entirely on Unbound's cache‐warming and recursion. Local DNS entries still handled (via the router and local DNS) so internal devices remain accessible even if the DNS cluster goes wonky. This is essentially a mini enterprise‐level DNS stack, located right in someone's home. Surprisingly attainable. ## Why do this at home? You might ask: isn't this overkill for a home network? Fair question. The real answer is: it depends on how much you care about reliability, privacy, and control. Here are the key benefits: ### Reliability/Redundancy When your DNS is down, nothing works. Treating it as a mission‐critical part of your infrastructure (like you would in a small business) makes total sense if you have devices working remotely or important home services. Using Keepalived + Pi‑hole means if one node fails the other takes over seamlessly. ### Privacy & Trust By running Unbound recursively, you reduce reliance on third‑party DNS resolvers and avoid some of the "upstream" tracking issues. The user's twist—routing all DNS traffic through the VPN—adds another layer, so even root server queries aren't exposed to the ISP. ### Control & Insights You get full visibility into what devices are resolving, blocking ads and trackers (via Pi‑hole), and custom local DNS entries (for home lab appliances). If you're already running a lab or migrating workloads (which you are), this gives you tight control over DNS behavior. ### Future‑proofing As more devices come in (IoT, remote workers, Kubernetes clusters, backups), you'll want DNS that just works. A fallback DNS system makes your home network more resilient. ## The mechanics: how it works Let's break down the "how" in plain terms. ### Unbound as recursive resolver Instead of pointing Pi‑hole to an upstream like Google or Cloudflare, Unbound queries root servers directly on behalf of your network. This means you're less dependent on one external provider and improve privacy/ performance. Many tutorials show how to configure Unbound for this purpose. ### Pi‑hole as DNS filter + stats engine Pi‑hole handles blocking unwanted domains (ads, trackers) and serves as your network's DNS entry point. In this setup it doesn't handle caching majorly — that's left to Unbound — which helps keep the architecture clean. ### Keepalived + virtual IP for failover Both Pi‑hole/Unbound nodes share a virtual IP address on the local network. The router hands out that virtual IP as the DNS server. If the master node fails or is unreachable, Keepalived moves the virtual IP to the secondary node automatically. Clients don't care; they still hit the same IP. ### VPN routing for added privacy All DNS traffic (and in this case, all home network traffic) is routed via a VPN service. That means when Unbound reaches out to root servers, it does so through the encrypted tunnel, preventing your ISP from passively observing or interfering. ### Local DNS entries & fallback path The router itself handles the local DNS entries (so you can reach, say, nas.home or k8s.lab) and acts as a fail‐safe: if the DNS cluster completely goes down, you still have some basic resolution, at least internally. ## What to watch out for (and how to keep it solid) Doing this well means being aware of trade‑offs and pitfalls. Here are some considerations: **Hardware & power:** Even though small hardware (like a Raspberry Pi) works, you'll want reliable power, network connectivity, and cooling. **Single router dependency:** Even with two DNS nodes, if the router is down your clients might still suffer. The user admitted "yes, my router is a single point of failure". **Fail‑over testing/maintenance:** It's important to test fail‑over (pull the plug on one node, see if the other picks up the virtual IP). Several users noted caveats in real‑world failover behaviour. **Timing of sync/config updates:** If you run multiple Pi‑hole instances you'll want to keep their blocklists/configs in sync. Tools like Nebula‑sync (or older ones like Gravity‑Sync) help. **Complexity vs benefit:** For a typical home with a few devices, a single Pi‑hole instance with a default upstream may be fine. But if you have remote workers, self‑hosted services, or labs, the extra effort pays off. **Security hygiene:** When you're exposing more infrastructure (VPN, DNS, self‑hosted services) you'll want to ensure you've locked down access, kept software up to date, and monitored logs. ## How you could adapt this for your scenario at Catalogic Since you're working in backup/migration + Kubernetes and creating AI/ChatGPT content, you probably already value reliability and control. Here's how you might apply this DNS stack in your context: **For home office + remote dev work:** Use the redundant DNS setup for your team's home network so they don't get disrupted if one node fails. **For lab infrastructure:** If you spin up Kubernetes clusters at home or test backup/migration workflows, having local DNS resolution + visibility is a big plus. **For content creation:** You could write or demonstrate how your DNS stack supports privacy, remote work reliability, and hybrid cloud/homelab configurations — great content for your AI/ChatGPT audience. **Backup implications:** If you're helping clients with backup/migration you could highlight how DNS resiliency is a foundational part of modern infrastructure (even at home) and how it scales to enterprise. ## Final word Look — this setup is not for everyone. If you only have a handful of devices and don't care about DNS failures, you'll survive with a simple setup. But if you do care — if you host services, work remotely, value privacy, don't want "it just went offline" surprises — then investing in redundant DNS makes sense. And bonus: It's a cool project. You learn about recursion, fail‑over, VPN routing, and get deep insights into how DNS underpins everything online. For folks who like tinkering (and you do!), this is very satisfying.