How To Configure DNS Failover in 5 Simple Steps
Preventing outages isn’t just a good idea…nowadays, it’s a necessity! Even sites that haven’t previously been considered “mission-critical” are now feeling the pressure of growing demands and expectations of consumers.
If your site’s down, rest assured the internet will be abuzz about it. You can be a bigger clean freak than Monica Geller, but there’s no sweeping an outage under the rug!
Luckily for you, the ensuing aftermath of an outage can be avoided entirely just by using the F word! No, not that one. What kind of blog do you think this is? I’m talking about this F word:
Failover.
Though, to be fair, the word you probably thought of first would likely be used by at least one person in your organization during an outage. After all, outages do tend to make things stressful.
But with DNS Made Easy, your luck doesn’t stop there.
We’re known for making DNS, well, easy. We don’t just provide you with the fastest speeds and 100% uptime (and those are the facts, not a brag), we also aim to make your work life easier.
And who doesn’t want that?
Of course, you’d have to use our services to know just how much easier we can make your job, so I’d recommend signing up — right now. I’ll wait…
[elevator meme here]
Step-by-step Guide For Configuring Failover (With Video)
Okay, let’s get you set up! Here’s a step-by-step guide for configuring Failover within the DNS Made Easy dashboard. You can read or watch the video. Or both!
But first, this tutorial assumes the following:
- You have at least one domain configured in DNS Made Easy and know the basics of what Failover is. . But if you want to learn more, here are several detailed Failover articles to get you up to speed.
- You have a fundamental understanding of DNS configurations
- An A record (or record type of your choice) already exists for your domain. If you need to create an A record and require help, visit this tutorial first.
- You already have or know how to set up a contact list in your DNS Made Easy Account. This step is only necessary if you want more than one person to receive Failover event alerts. Learn to create a contact list here.
Step 1: Navigate to the Records page within Managed DNS
Step 2: Adjust the TTL in your Record
When using Failover, we recommend setting your TTL values between 180–300 seconds, as this prevents most traffic from being sent to the downed resource.
Step 3: Monitor and Failover settings
Now it’s time to enable Failover. In the A records section, click “off” in the SM/FO column.
The Monitoring and Failover pop-up window should now be displayed.
Step 4: Configure the Monitoring section:
- Be sure to tick the checkbox beside Monitoring Notifications
- Enter your system description
- Select the correct contact list from the Notification Contact dropdown menu. This list will alert your team as soon as a Failover event occurs so that you can start troubleshooting right away.
- Specify the maximum number of emails you wish to receive for each failover event. You will automatically receive one email on system failure and one email on system recovery, as well as an additional email after every five consecutive failures.
- Note: The longer an IP is down the more emails you will receive (potentially hundreds). This section lets you limit additional failover alerts to a manageable amount
- Select the sensitivity level you want for Failover response (set to Medium by default).
You can choose High, Medium, or Low, depending on your specific needs. High sensitivity has the faster failover but may catch systems that have temporary resource issues. Low is the least sensitive and will take a few seconds longer to failover. Medium is typically an ideal fit for most domains.
Sensitivity Level Number of sequential checks to confirm system outages High 4 checks (fastest) Medium 7 checks (default and recommended for most users) Low 10 checks (slowest)
- Select the protocol from the dropdown menu (HTTP, HTTPS, TCP, UDP, DNS)
- Enter Port to monitor (this will automatically populate with the default port for each protocol, so be sure to change the port if yours is different).
Step 5: Configure the Failover section:
- Tick the box beside DNS Failover (leave turn-off auto-failover after first failure unchecked unless you’ll need to make changes to your server(s) prior to using them again).
- Enter the backup IP addresses that your primary server will failover to in the event of a network issue or outage (you can have up to 5 backup IPs at DNS Made Easy).
- Click the OK button.
And voilà! You have now configured Failover for your domain. See, it really is DNS made easy!
Of course, if you run into any hiccups or have any other questions about configuring your DNS, you can visit our in-depth Knowledge Base for detailed tutorials or contact our support team for help.
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