DNS is the front door to every web request. Small mistakes—wrong TTLs, missing glue, or stale records—can cause outages that look like application failures. This guide outlines practical DNS monitoring for SMBs.
Related: SSL Guide · 5 Common DNS Misconfigurations · Uptime Guide
What to monitor
- NS records: delegation health and consistency
- A/AAAA: expected targets, no stale entries
- CNAME: chain length and resolution
- MX/TXT: email deliverability dependencies
- SOA: serial increments post‑change
- Reverse lookups when applicable
TTLs and propagation
Use shorter TTLs during migrations, longer once stable. Monitor that changes propagate to all authoritative servers.
Alerting
- Critical record drift (A/AAAA, CNAME on key hosts)
- Delegation breakage
- Unexpected removal of MX/TXT
Feature: DNS Monitoring. Pair with SSL monitoring for end‑to‑end coverage.
Put this into practice
Start monitoring in minutes. Email, Slack, Teams, Discord, PagerDuty, and SMS alerts.