Secondary DNS Hosting – DNS Backup Service

DNS is such a critical component to your digital business and it’s surprising how many folks don’t realize it. DNS is often taken for granted and becomes an afterthought until it goes belly up and stops working. When DNS stops, EVERYTHING stops!

Secondary DNS to the rescue! Secondary DNS is a standard method to safely backup your DNS zones onto another DNS provider/network if your primary DNS provider goes down. Secondary DNS has been around for quite some time although it’s not often implemented – even though it can save your digital bacon if you have a primary DNS outage (like the attack on Dyn back in Oct 2016)

Since the Dyn DDoS attack, we’ve seen a huge influx of questions and activity around our Secondary DNS service. In order to take the mystery out of Secondary DNS, we created several techncial how-to’s on implement a Secondary DNS solution using CloudfloorDNS as your DNS backup. If you currently have a single DNS provider and are using Dyn, NS1, DNS Made Easy or GoDaddy Premium DNS we have a Secondary DNS how-to that shows you step by step on how to enable Secondary DNS hosting at CloudfloorDNS. It literally takes less than 10 minutes to setup and can save you thousands of dollars in the event of a primary DNS outage.

Interested in learning how to setup Secondary DNS for your online operation? See our Secondary DNS tutorials on our Secondary DNS hosting page or scroll below to download them directly

Hosting DNS at DYN? – Backup your DNS at CloudfloorDNS [PDF]

Hosting DNS at DNSMadeEasy? – Backup your DNS at CloudfloorDNS [PDF]

Hosting DNS at NS1? – Backup your DNS at CloudfloorDNS [PDF]

Hosting DNS at GoDaddy? – Backup your DNS at CloudfloorDNS [PDF]

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

Many organizations are flocking to the cloud for their websites and hosted applications for increased performance. The cloud takes the chore out of provisioning servers and adds a layer of simplicity to scale out performance as the need escalates with just a few clicks. Having a large network of fast servers at the ready helps with scalability, but it’s only part of the equation to optimum web performance.

DNS is often overlooked when it comes to your Internet operations performance, yet it’s often one of the most critical components in the chain when squeezing out every ounce of speed. Every web page and app have resources and objects that are required to load for the page or app to be usable. Some web pages and apps can have hundreds of these, each one taking a few milliseconds to load. Each of these resources are typically hosted on your servers and thus need a DNS request to process each item. Slow DNS means slowdowns when fetching these resources, and the end result is slow page and app rendering.

Mix slow anything with today’s ever-impatient consumers and you have a problem. Today’s online visitors will wait for a second or two until they leave your site in search of the products or services they are looking for. Marketing research proves it – a slow site means a loss of clients and revenue to faster, more convenient competition.

Since DNS is at the bottom of the commonly thought of technology chain when it comes to online operations, it makes sense to start there. Select a Managed DNS provider that offers a fast global Anycast DNS network along with advanced DNS services like Load Balancing, GEO DNS and Failover. Anycast DNS will speed vastly up your operations from the start, and advanced DNS services can greatly increase uptime, scalability and brand availability.

When it comes down to it, it’s all about maintaining the foundation of your Internet presence and that begins with DNS. DNS resides at the core of all online activities and without it the Internet wouldn’t exist as it does today. With a fast, consistent availability of your online presence you will continually maintain the loyalty and confidence of your current clients and satisfy future customers.

Have you checked your Web Performance lately? CloudfloorDNS can help you examine your current performance and provide solutions to instantly increase your DNS speed, reliability and flexibility.

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

Your Internet Operations rely on DNS – an often overlooked area when it comes to enhancing both the speed and reliability of your web presence. Whether you run your own DNS server or you outsource to a Managed DNS provider, having a backup or secondary DNS provider can save your company from costly downtime if and when something happens.

Secondary DNS service simply mirrors the zone files from your primary DNS server and responds to queries just like the primary. If the Primary DNS has an outage or is attacked, your secondary DNS provider handles the load. Having a redundant DNS provider may seem like a waste of money in your operations budget, but when you realize the true cost of downtime (lost sales, lost customers and brand damage), paying for a secondary DNS provider seems like a bargain.

Does your company have a plan for a DNS outage? If not it’s time to think about it…..and getting a secondary DNS provider

The holiday shopping season just started and online purchasing for holiday gifts & gatherings are heating up. This is a busy season for your hosting providers and cloud companies, slinging data as fast as they can to keep up with the demand. It’s the same with DNS providers, this is one of those busy seasons when online retailers ramp up their capacity by load balancing and adding more hostnames and CPU cycles to their lineup.

Some online retailers don’t realize that a customers online shopping experience all begins with DNS, and your DNS provider is a critical key to not only answering DNS, but doing it smart and fast. When a prospective customer wants to browse your online offerings, they type in your domain name. This then triggers searches on DNS from the client computer to their IP, to the Root servers, the TLD server and eventually to your DNS host (Such as CloudfloorDNS, or possibly your Web Host such as GoDaddy, Rackspace, etc)

The faster your DNS host answers, the faster that customer can load their browser up with your catalog of products and services. Imagine if you had slow DNS answering for your domain and thousands of customers trying to hit your site. Each second adds up and the average person today won’t wait more than a few seconds to see a page load. An Error comes up and they are gone and off to a competitor. Not only can sales and valuable revenue be lost, but customer loyalty and a dented brand can be part of the collateral damage.
If you area serious about protecting your brand and bottom line, it’s not too late. Here are a few things you can do to help get you a solid footing before the big rush starts in November:

• SPEED – Switch to a pure Anycast DNS solution from a trusted Managed DNS provider – If your still using your hosting company to handle DNS for you, that can be a place to start. Most Web hosting companies do DNS because they have to, and its typically less reliable, slower and missing advanced DNS features.
• RELIABILITY – Anycast DNS adds a level of reliability in itself , but it cant hurt to utilize a Failover solution as well. Using DNS Failover and having a second or third server to helps lower your chances of an outage. Having a hot standby or load balancing and using Automatic DNS Failover can detect a failed or slow server and move DNS to a backup.
• FLEXIBILITY – Load balancing and GEO DNS are other added benefits when migrating to a managed DNS provider. These advanced DNS services offer a quick and simple way to balance DNS traffic over multiple servers, or even segregate DNS traffic by country, allowing you to fine tune who gets what on a geographical scale.

DNS – The Foundation of your Internet Presence

I’ve been in the DNS and Domain name business for almost 20 years now and explaining what DNS is and how important it is has always been a struggle. As critical as DNS is, it’s an underlying Internet technology that not many people pay too much attention to – until it’s not working.

During all those years in my career I’ve struggled for a quick and simple way to explain what DNS is and it’s importance in the chain of Internet technology. This graphic above really sums up the importance of DNS and how it acts as the foundation of your online presence.

Sit back and think about your Internet presence as a house or building that contains your web server, email servers, FTP server, API, VOIP Phone system etc. This house of yours relies on two things; your domain name and DNS before any other service can be setup.

Your domain name is just like the plot of land you build on – without your parcel of land, you have nowhere to build. The domain name must be registered and in good standing (Not expired) before anything will work. Once you have your domain name, you can start to build the foundation before you can build your house. If your foundation is weak and unreliable, your house can crumble to the ground. This foundation is your DNS – a reliable way of answering queries to your domain name and pointing visitors to your online resources such as your web server, etc. Without a strong DNS service as your foundation, you risk loosing the house and all it’s contents.

There are many other analogies that can be used to explain DNS but the true moral of the story is don’t skimp on the foundation when building your Internet house…

BIND is the world’s most popular DNS server – serving a large portion of the Internet due to it’s open source model and free distribution. This DNS software is a wonderful benefit for the Internet community, but also something that requires care and affection.

Just last week, a major flaw (CVE-2015-5477) was discovered in BIND DNS Version 9.X that could allow a single lone wolf attacker (An Internet “bad guy”) to take down a large number of domain entities across the internet with an easy to execute malformed query. All it takes is a push of the button and your domain and all of your online resources could become virtually crippled.

Fortunately, CloudfloorDNS uses a proprietary DNS system that is not vulnerable to these BIND attacks/exploits.

This story isn’t about BIND per se – its about not placing your organization at risk by using DNS smarter. How so? It’s simple. There are two options. One, use an Authoritative DNS Provider that isn’t susceptible to the same risks that some open source software can present. Two, add a non open source Authoritative DNS Provider to your delegation along with your existing provider that may use open source Name Server software. Having dual Authoritative DNS providers will mitigate risk by not allowing your Internet presence to be threatened by open source vulnerabilities and it also offers additional geographic redundancy. This may sound over the top, but if your business relies on a single organization that uses open source software only, and they get hit with a vulnerability attack as described above, your company and your online business simply goes offline. Not only your website, but your entire online entity will go down in flames. It’s just as bad as allowing your domain name to expire.

When it comes to DNS, thinking smarter and not waiting until a failure or attack to make those critical infrastructure decisions can save you in the long run.