DNS Check

DNS check is a monitoring method used by Xitoring to verify the availability and performance of a DNS service. DNS checks involve sending a DNS query to the DNS server and measuring the response time and correctness of the DNS resolution.

During a DNS check, Xitoring verifies the DNS response time, DNS resolution, and DNS records to ensure the DNS service is functioning correctly. If there is an issue with the DNS service, Xitoring sends an incident to the designated Notification Roles with details about the issue, including the severity level, and affected server. and the root cause of the problem.

Xitoring not only examines the response time and correctness of the DNS resolution but also performs additional validation. This includes verifying the integrity of DNS records, such as A, AAAA, CNAME, MX, and TXT records, to ensure they are accurately configured and up to date.

Create DNS Check

Creating a DNS check in Xitoring is very easy as you just need to provide the address of your DNS service and setup e trigger for it.

Check Options

Type

From the list of available check types, DNS will be selected.

As in Xitoring, there are Server checks and independent checks, you can Create a check and assign it to a Server so it will count as one of the checks of a specific server. this option also can be changed or edited later.

So the list will contain a list of registered servers that the user can assign the check to them.

Hostname

The hostname is the address of the DNS check, it can be an IPv4 or IPv6 address or a domain name, you can see examples of each of them in the following box:

IPv4
107.45.66.2

IPv6
fe80::a510:68bd:7405:1869

Domain
xitoring.com

Check Label

Users can choose a name for the check that is being created using this field, Check label can contain characters, space, and numbers. Special characters are not allowed in the check label section.

Group

The next option is Group. Xitoring has an advanced Group/Sub-Group management system so users can sort and organize Checks and Server, For example, some users organize their assets based on location and create Groups for countries and Sub-Groups for Cities. it can help see the records for a specific part of your assets easily.

Using the gear icon next to the title, you can access the Group management mini tool, the user can create, delete and edit groups and sub-groups.

Interval

Interval sets how often probing nodes will make their requests to your URL, 1 minute will provide the most detailed, accurate, reports and notifications. Also For some services, the Higher interval makes more sense. So you can configure Xitoring to Check your DNS Check status every minute or you can make it check every 10 minutes.

Trigger Options

The most important part of creating a check is Trigger options Triggers will define the incident status of a Check.

Notification Roles

In this section user can assign one or more notification roles to this check trigger, it will define who gets notified and how every time this check has an incident. For Example, the user has two notification roles one for the IT team that contains the Email and phone numbers of the team members, and one notification role for the CTO. Users can configure the trigger to notify the IT team and the CTO in time of an incident using Email and SMS notifications.

Fault Tolerance

Fault tolerance is a time value (Minutes) that determines how much stress can a system take before it's entering a critical state. If you set FT to 5 we send an incident report when the incident is existing for 5 minutes.

Value

Users can fill this field with the value that should exist in a certain record that will be defined in the next section Record, it means that if the value will not appear in the output, Xitoring will trigger an incident.

Record

Xitoring's DNS check supports different record types, including A, NS, CNAME, PTR, and MX.

A records are used to map a domain name to an IPv4 address,
NS records identify the name servers responsible for a particular domain.
CNAME records allow a domain name to be an alias for another domain name.
PTR records map an IPv4 address to a hostname,
MX records specify the mail servers responsible for accepting email messages for a domain.

By offering support for different DNS record types, Xitoring provides flexibility in monitoring DNS services based on the specific needs and requirements of the user. Users can select the record types they want to monitor and set up checks to verify the availability and correctness of these records.

Tips

The Run Test button can be used to either determine the current status of the check or make sure that the entered information is correct.

Handling of DNS Responses for DoT Queries

Xitoring’s DNS monitoring system is designed to check both the accuracy and response time of DNS queries. However, there's a catch: when a DNS over TLS (DoT) query is sent, the system doesn’t flag an error if the DNS server replies with a status other than a resolved IP —like "REFUSED"— as long as it doesn’t time out. This approach helps keep response tracking in line with how DNS actually works in the real world, where some servers intentionally refuse certain queries instead of just failing completely.