DNS has been a hot topic recently when two large companies operating online went down due to DNS outages. No matter how big or small an online organization is, they all rely on DNS to operate online since it’s a core part of internet infrastructure. With recent attacks and outages, many are starting to realize that it’s important to have a reliable DNS network or two powering your internet infrastructure – aka DNS. DNS is the one core technology that’s involved in everything your business does online, yet it’s almost always overlooked. Odd, isn’t it? It’s really the most important thing next to keeping your domain names registered and the sad truth is many businesses don’t realize this until it’s too late….

Just ask Fonality and National Australian Bank just how important DNS is. Both companies had some major DNS outages in the last few weeks that took down a bulk of their customers access to their systems. Fonality customers couldn’t make calls via their VOIP services for several hours and Australian National Bank customers couldn’t use ATM’s, Mobile Internet banking, payment processing and call centers for almost 24 hours.

Outages like these not only damage the brand of the organization, but they can be very costly financially. Some of these financial losses will be from customer abandonment and opportunity lost with new customers, but the real cost is within the operation itself. Support call centers get inundated, (if customers can even reach them) and ops and marketing folks are running around trying to fix these issues and put out fires instead of working on other more important things. Depending on what domains are involved, a DNS failure can take everything offline and cripple all online operations – Not good.

To be fair, one of these DNS issues did come about from human error, but it goes to show you just how important DNS truly is to your online success. Investing in your internet operations is a good idea to prevent issues like these and outsourcing to a managed DNS provider (or two with Secondary DNS) is one of the best investments you can make for your business. Think of it as added job security and adding a little insurance to your online operations. Spending a little now can prevent spending a whole lot more down the road if and when you do have a DNS issue.

Fine tune your Content Delivery with DNS

Today’s Internet economy is truly global and your organization can expect visitors and customers from the far corners of each continent. Servicing customers is just one aspect of your online operations, and you’ll also be connecting offices and remote employees with the tools such as Skype, GotoMeeting, VOIP, VPN and other essentials they’ll need to perform their jobs.

All of these websites, VPN’s, Telephony, SaaS and Cloud based services all rely on DNS to operate and every day more companies realize the true importance of robust DNS…it really is the foundation of the Internet. Once you have a solid DNS infrastructure that you can rely on, it’s time to start utilizing the DNS to fine tune the speed and delivery of your content and online services.

DNS Load Balancing and GEO DNS are just a couple of methods integrated into the CloudfloorDNS platform that help you adjust the granularity and location delivery of your content and services. DNS Load Balancing provides the ability to direct visitors to multiple IP’s or servers in a distributed fashion based on a few well known methods of balancing. You can distribute the DNS requests evenly across multiple servers, truly balancing the load so each server gets an even amount, or you can adjust the percentage to send more hits to your server with the most “beef”.

Add DNS Failover and integrated server monitoring and you now can monitor response time and availability of each host and set rules to pull the host in and out of service if becomes degraded or offline. The variations are endless with over 14 testing methods and protocols and failover options.

Adding GEO DNS to the mix adds yet another level of optimization. Using the Cloudfloor GEO DNS gives your DNS the ability to define custom DNS replies based on the origin of the user’s request. Have different content for the EU and North America? Easy, simply point North America to one IP, and EU countries to the Second IP.

Our GEO DNS does this by utilizing EDNS0 or client-IP technology and gives our Anycast DNS network the ability to determine the exact GPS location of the user and directing them to content tailored for that country or region. Managing your traffic at the DNS level can give you the speed, flexibility and scalability you need to grow your online operations and provide your visitors with the faster more precise content, product and service offerings.

Want more detail on our GEO DNS and DNS Load Balancing? See the individual product pages, datasheets or contact us for more information

DNS can do some amazing things since it’s the start of all Internet traffic. Not only can DNS help provide performance and uptime, but it also has a few tricks up its sleeve such as DNS failover. DNS Failover offers you the ability to simply change a DNS entry to an alternate or backup IP address on the fly in the event of a failure on the primary.

DNS Failover requires a server monitoring component that tells the DNS when to utilize the backup server. These monitors check your server or Internet resource from multiple points across the globe at regular intervals and work together to determine if there is an outage or if it’s a one time Internet “burp”. Multiple monitoring points are a critical aspect to this setup, ensuring there are no “false positives” causing a failover scenario

Another critical aspect of ensuring DNS failover works is low TTL or DNS cache times. The cache time tells other DNS servers how long to store the last answer before asking again. The lower the TTL the faster your visitors will get to the backup IP upon a failure. Having low TTL’s on your DNS records can definitely cause higher QPM/QPS (DNS Queries per Minute/Second) on your account, but in many cases the advantages outweighs the costs.

It costs a ton of money, time and resources to build a brand – you shouldn’t loose them from a simple server or website outage. DNS Failover can direct your customers to a backup in mere seconds and save you thousands while doing so. To learn more about Managed DNS and DNS Failover, see CloudfloorDNS.com and our DNS Failover Service

Related Article: What does downtime cost your Digital Business

Exciting new integration with Everbridge IT Alerting Platform

Today we announced an exciting integration pairing our Netmon Server and Network monitoring solution with the Everbridge’s Unified Critical Communications platform. What does this mean to you and why should you care?

Cloud Computing is big business and downtime can not only cost you lost revenue, but lost customers and irreversible damage to your brand. That’s why KNOWING about a failure or outage is just as important as FIXING it…The integration between these two platforms helps reduce the MTTK (Mean Time to Know) and can save an organization thousands of dollars by helping to resolve the issue faster.

CloudfloorDNS Netmon Server and Network monitoring service utilizes over 15 different methods for determining a server failure or degraded application performance. When any degradation or outage is detected, the Netmon service notifies the appropriate IT or operations team via the Everbridge IT Alerting Critical Communications platform. While the appropriate teams are being notified about the outage via the Everbridge IT Alerting platform, the Netmon service can also trigger DNS Failover to redirect the resource or application to a backup server(s) until the issue is fixed. Utilizing other publishing methods within the Everbridge ITA platform, customers can also automatically update social media and other channels to keep both employees and customers in the loop.

Interested in learning more about CloudfloorDNS Netmon Server and Network Monitoring? Interested in the Everbridge IT Alerting platform?

CloudfloorDNS, An Everbridge Solution – https://www.CloudfloorDNS.com