Intelligent load shedding of traffic based on current load state of target capacity

A system comprising:

• a decision engine configured to monitor status indicators from scaling units;
• a domain name system (DNS) helper server configured to query the decision engine for a list of racks to be included in a DNS response to a DNS query landing on a server, wherein the list of racks is added to a record within a zone file;
• and
• a DNS service configured to receive a DNS request from a device and access the zone file to retrieve the list of racks to be included in a DNS response to the DNS query.

A computer-readable storage medium containing a set of instructions to cause one or more processors to:

• determine a status of multiple scaling units within a data center;
• receive, from a requesting device, a domain name resolution request to translate a domain name into an Internet protocol (IP) address;
• identify multiple IP addresses to be included in a response to the domain name resolution request,
• wherein the multiple IP addresses only include IP addresses of a subset of the multiple scaling units with a status indicative of available capacity;
• and
• send the multiple IP addresses to the requesting device.