That won't work.     I think it should be: ns-xyz01.domain.com   Assuming that 10.9.165.219/220 are the smartconnect service IPs, I expect all the clients to gang up on one node.    Modify the right side of the NS record to something completely arbitrary  like “foo”    Then change the A record for foo.metlife.com to point to the smartconnect IP’s    This is a very common error in SmartConnect.
When you create the NS record for and Isilon SmartConnect Zone, is there any reason to add a "a" record for that entry as well?    I am just trying to help out a customer who has a bit of mess with their DNS and everything was set up incorrectly and when they mount the original SmartConnect name, it get assigned to a single 1 GE NIC instead of distributing it across the 10GE interfaces.    When I look at the documentation, it doesn't mention adding a "a" record to DNS for the SmartConnect names.
SmartConnect DNS Entry