Described herein are systems, methods, and software to manage nameservers for domain name system (DNS) requests. In one implementation, a computing element receives a domain name system (DNS) configuration from a coordination service that includes a plurality of rules. The computing element identifies an operating system configuration on the computing element and maps each of the rules to local rule implementations on the computing element based on the operating system configuration. Once the local rule implementations are identified, the computing element applies the local rule implementations on the computing element.