DNS Monitor

Knowledge Front’s DNS monitor performs a standard DNS query the specified IP address directly. The response is compared to a list of expected results. If the query fails or the results differ an alert is triggered.

Configuration Options

Label:

A name that is easier to read than an IP address or fully qualified domain name. Primary DNS for example.

Timer:

How often each monitoring location will run the test. A 2 minute timer mean that each configured monitoring location will perform a test every 2 minutes.

DNS Server IP/Hostname:

The IP address or hostname of the Domain Name System server.

Time Zone:

The time zone used when viewing reports for this monitor.

DNS Query:

Request this record (IP address or hostname) from the DNS server.

Lookup Type:

Currently A, CNAME, MX, and PTR record types are supported. For explanations of lookup types see Wikipedia: List of DNS record types

Performing reverse lookups is done by using the PTR record type, reversing the octets of the IP address, and appending the special .in-addr.arpa domain. For example to do a reverse lookup on 192.0.2.5 the Query field would be 5.2.0.192.in-addr.arpa.

Wikipedia: Reverse DNS Lookup

Inspect answer:

If checked responses from the DNS Server will be compared against a set of answer (see next entry). If the response does not contain all answers in the list then that test will be considered a failure.

Answer List:

When Inspect Answer is checked the Answer List is a comma or space separated list of hostnames or IP addresses that are expected to be returned from the given query. MX record tests ignore the priority field, focusing only on the hostnames returned by the query.

Spaces, newlines, and commas are all accepted as separators.

examples:

www1.example.com, www2.example.com

1.2.3.4
192.168.5.12