DNS monitoring in ManageEngine CloudDNS 

 What are monitors? 

 What can you do with CloudDNS's monitors? 

Detect issues early: Monitor your DNS records and servers to identify problems as soon as they arise, often before they affect your users.

Minimize downtime: Quickly respond to downtime with immediate alerts, reducing the impact on your service and maintaining your online presence.

Analyze performance: Track how fast your DNS queries are being answered and ensure that your DNS configuration is optimized for speed.

Ensure record accuracy: Regular checks can confirm that your DNS records are correct and have not been altered maliciously or by mistake.

Improve security: Monitor for unusual activity that could indicate a security breach, such as a DNS spoofing attack, and take prompt action to secure your domain.

Traffic routing: Use DNS monitoring to efficiently manage and route traffic, ensuring the best user experience by directing users to the nearest or most optimal server.

To access monitors in CloudDNS,

• Select Monitors from the left menu bar.

• On the Monitors page you can create new monitors using the Add Monitor button on the top right corner.

• From the menu that drops down with multiple protocols like TCP, WEB protocols: HTTP or HTTPS, DNS, and PING. You can select the protocol of your choice to monitor
  

 Types of monitors available in CloudDNS 

 Creating TCP monitors 

MONITOR NAME: Serves as an identifier for the monitor you're creating. Choose a name that easily describes the purpose of the monitor, its location, or the service it's checking.

HOST: Enter the IP address of the host you want to monitor. These hosts are the ones that are  served as responses for DNS queries to your domains. Specifying this tells the monitor where to direct its TCP checks.

PORT: Specify the network port number that the monitor will use to establish a TCP connection with the host. Common port numbers are 80 for HTTP and 443 for HTTPS.

PREFER IPV6: When enabled, this option tells the monitor to use an IPv6 address for the host if available. If disabled, it will use IPv4 by default.

LOCATION: Allows you to select the geographic location from which the monitoring checks will be performed. This can be important for analyzing how your DNS performance varies around the world.

CHECK INTERVAL: Select a check interval that determines how frequently the monitor will perform checks on the host. A shorter interval means more frequent checks, which could provide quicker notifications of issues but may use more resources.

VENDOR: Mention the specific monitoring service or technology vendor that provides the TCP monitoring capabilities. If the records you're targeting is monitored using CloudDNS, select  Zoho DNS.

The buttons at the bottom (Cancel, Save, Save and Continue) allow you to either cancel the creation of the monitor, save the current configuration and stay on the page, or save the configuration and proceed to the next step in the monitor setup process.

Once you click Save and continue the monitor is activated for a specific host.

Creating WEB monitors 

MONITOR NAME: Serves as an identifier for the monitor you're creating. Choose a descriptive name that easily describes the purpose of the monitor, the geographic location from which it's monitoring, or the service it's checking.

PROTOCOL: Selecting the internet protocol your monitor will use to check the service. The two available protocols are HTTP and HTTPS.

HOST: Enter the IP address of the host you want to monitor. These hosts are the ones that are  served as responses for DNS queries to your domains. Specifying this tells the monitor where to direct its TCP checks.

PORT: Specify the network port number that the monitor will use to establish a HTTP or HTTPS connection with the host. Common port numbers are 80 for HTTP and 443 for HTTPS.

PREFER IPV6: When enabled, this option tells the monitor to use an IPv6 address for the host if available. If disabled, it will use IPv4 by default.

FQDN: Enter the Fully Qualified Domain Name (FQDN) of the  server you intend to monitor, which typically includes the hostname and the domain name.

PATH: Specify the particular path on the server you want to monitor. For example, if you want to check a specific page or resource on your website, enter the path to that resource.

SEARCH STRING: Enter a string of text that the monitor will look for in the response body to confirm the service is responding correctly. This is often used to ensure that a web page is not just up, but also displaying the expected content.

EXPECTED STATUS CODE: Specify the HTTP status code that you expect a healthy response from the targeted host to return. "200 OK" is the standard response for a successful HTTP request.

USER AGENT: If you want to simulate requests from a specific browser or device, you can enter the User Agent string here. This will make the server think the request is coming from the browser or device specified in the User Agent string.

LOCATION: Allows you to select the geographic location from which the monitoring checks will be performed. This can be important for analyzing how your DNS performance varies around the world.

CHECK INTERVAL: Select a check interval that determines how frequently the monitor will perform checks on the host. A shorter interval means more frequent checks, which could provide quicker notifications of issues but may use more resources.

VENDOR: Mention the specific monitoring service or technology vendor that provides the TCP monitoring capabilities. If the records you're targeting is monitored using CloudDNS, select  Zoho DNS.

The buttons at the bottom (Cancel, Save, Save and Continue) allow you to either cancel the creation of the monitor, save the current configuration and stay on the page, or save the configuration and proceed to the next step in the monitor setup process.

Once you click Save and continue the monitor is activated for a specific host.

Creating PING monitors 

To create a PING monitor:

Once the Create Monitor (PING) page, enter the details for the fields below to create a PING monitor for a specific host. 

MONITOR NAME: Serves as an identifier for the monitor you're creating. Choose a descriptive name that easily describes the purpose of the monitor, the geographic location from which it's monitoring, or the service it's checking.

HOST: Enter the IP address of the host you want to monitor. These hosts are the ones that are  served as responses for DNS queries to your domains. Specifying this tells the monitor where to direct its TCP checks.

PREFER IPV6: When enabled, this option tells the monitor to use an IPv6 address for the host if available. If disabled, it will use IPv4 by default.

LOCATION: Allows you to select the geographic location from which the monitoring checks will be performed. This can be important for analyzing how your DNS performance varies around the world.

CHECK INTERVAL: Select a check interval that determines how frequently the monitor will perform checks on the host. A shorter interval means more frequent checks, which could provide quicker notifications of issues but may use more resources.

VENDOR: Mention the specific monitoring service or technology vendor that provides the TCP monitoring capabilities. If the records you're targeting is monitored using CloudDNS, select  Zoho DNS.

The buttons at the bottom (Cancel, Save, Save and Continue) allow you to either cancel the creation of the monitor, save the current configuration and stay on the page, or save the configuration and proceed to the next step in the monitor setup process.

Once you click Save and continue the monitor is activated for a specific host.

Create DNS monitors 

MONITOR NAME: Serves as an identifier for the monitor you're creating. Choose a descriptive name that easily describes the purpose of the monitor, the geographic location from which it's monitoring, or the service it's checking.

HOST: Enter the IP address of the host you want to monitor. These hosts are the ones that are  served as responses for DNS queries to your domains. Specifying this tells the monitor where to direct its TCP checks.

PREFER IPV6: When enabled, this option tells the monitor to use an IPv6 address for the host if available. If disabled, it will use IPv4 by default.

NAMESERVER: Mention the specific DNS server to query against. This could be a public DNS server like one from Google (8.8.8.8) or Cloudflare (1.1.1.1), or a private/internal DNS server.

PORT: Specify the network port you use for DNS queries, which is typically 53 for standard DNS traffic.

LOOKUP TYPE: Specify the type of DNS record you want to query. "A" records are the most common and map a domain name to an IPv4 address.  "AAAA" records are the most common and map a domain name to an IPv6 address.

LOCATION: Allows you to select the geographic location from which the monitoring checks will be performed. This can be important for analyzing how your DNS performance varies around the world.

CHECK INTERVAL: Select a check interval that determines how frequently the monitor will perform checks on the host. A shorter interval means more frequent checks, which could provide quicker notifications of issues but may use more resources.

VENDOR: Mention the specific monitoring service or technology vendor that provides the TCP monitoring capabilities. If the records you're targeting is monitored using CloudDNS, select  Zoho DNS.

The buttons at the bottom (Cancel, Save, Save and Continue) allow you to either cancel the creation of the monitor, save the current configuration and stay on the page, or save the configuration and proceed to the next step in the monitor setup process.

Once you click Save and continue the monitor is activated for a specific host.

 Managing monitors in CloudDNS 

CloudDNS also enables you to visually analyze the real-time statistics of each monitor with reports accessible alongside the edit, suspend, and delete icons.

Note: Monitors can only be applied to the hosts under A, AAAA, ALIAS and CNAME records.