Documentation forIpMonitor
Effective December 31, 2024, IpMonitor will reach its end of life and will no longer be available or supported. If you liked IpMonitor, consider trying another SolarWinds product.

DNS User Experience monitor

The DNS User Experience monitor verifies that the primary and secondary DNS servers can respond to a record query in a timely manner. The monitor tests that:

  • At least one DNS server is Up and running.
  • The primary DNS server, the secondary DSN server, or both servers can respond to a domain name query, perform a lookup, and resolve a host name.
  • The results of the resolved domain name correctly corresponds to the expected IP address.
  • The complete round-trip time until the received response is within a specific number of seconds.

The monitor considers the test to have failed if these conditions are not satisfied or if both DNS servers fail to respond within the Maximum Test Duration time.

This monitor uses the Universal Datagram Protocol (UDP)—the primary method of communication with DNS servers. The monitor alternately queries the primary and secondary DNS servers for a domain name until a DNS responds or the Maximum Test Duration time expires.

The results of the domain name resolutions are compared against a list of expected IP addresses. The result sets are verified in one of two ways:

  • They must include all IP addresses in the expected list.
  • They must have at least one of the IP addresses in the expected list.

Create a DNS - User Experience monitor

  1. Click Devices in the toolbar.
  2. Locate and click the targeted device you want to monitor.

  3. In the toolbar, click Add > Add New Monitor.

  4. In the Select Monitor menu, click DNS - User Experience.

  5. Under Identification, enter a name in the Monitor Name field using up to 64 characters.

    This name will appear in the Monitors List, Monitor Status, Logs pages, and your reports.

    You can change this name later, if necessary. ipMonitor does not use this field to internally identify this monitor.

  6. Select Enabled to enable the monitor.

    When enabled, the monitor tests the specified resource using the settings you enter under Test Parameters. You can disable the monitor later if required.

  7. (Optional) Select Store Monitor Statistics for Recent Activity and Historical Reports to enable this functionality.

  8. Under Test Parameters, enter the test parameters for the DNS server.

    1. Enter the IP address of DNS server you want to monitor. Click Or to add additional IP addresses.
    2. Enter the UDP port number that the target DNS server responds on. The default UDP port is port 53.
    3. Enter the DNS record to query.

  9. Under Analysis of Test Results, select an option and corresponding IP address (if required).

  10. Under Timing, configure the fields for the monitor testing states.

    1. In the Maximum Test Duration field, enter the maximum test duration rate (in seconds) that the monitor times out before the test is considered a failure.

    2. In the remaining fields, enter the number of second between each test while the monitor is in an OK state (Up), a failed state while alerts are processed (Down), and a failed state and the maximum number of alerts have been processed (Lost).

      In the Lost state, no additional failure alerts are processed. However, a recovery notification is sent if the monitor recovers.

  11. Enter the amount of time delay for each monitor testing state. For example, you may choose to intensify testing when a monitor enters a Warn state and reduce testing when the monitor enters a Lost state.

  12. Under Notification Control, complete the fields to determine how many test failures must occur before an alert is sent.

    1. Enter the number of test failures that occur for each alert before ipMonitor generates an alert for the monitor. The default option is 3.

    2. Enter the maximum number of alerts to send before the monitor enters a Lost state.

      The monitor must be assigned to a notification alert to generate an action.

  13. Under Recovery Parameters, complete the fields to indicate the corrective action used to automatically restore a resource using the External Process Recovery, Reboot Server Recovery, or Restart Service Recovery action.

    1. Enter the Fully Qualified Domain Name (FQDN), NetBIOS, or IP Address of the machine hosting the service that needs a restart or the machine that needs a restart. You can also click Browse to locate and select the machine.
    2. Select the set of credentials used by the recovery alert. You can select a specific credential to execute recovery alerts that require access to restricted resources, such as Reboot Server, Restart Service, or External Process.
    3. Select the list of services to restart on the target machine specified in the FQDN/NetBIOS/IP Address field. This field is only required for the Restart Service alert. If a service has dependencies, select all dependent services.
  14. Click OK.