NSD is an authoritative-only DNS server that is designed to be fast and secure. NSD is capable of handling high traffic volumes and is used by some of the world’s largest ISPs and organizations. It is also a great choice for those looking for a reliable DNS solution.
The prerequisites for monitoring NSD with Netdata are to have NSD and Netdata installed on your system.
Netdata auto discovers hundreds of services, and for those it doesn’t turning on manual discovery is a one line configuration. For more information on configuring Netdata for NSD monitoring please read the collector documentation.
You should now see the NSD section on the Overview tab in Netdata Cloud already populated with charts about all the metrics you care about.
Netdata has a public demo space (no login required) where you can explore different monitoring use-cases and get a feel for Netdata.
Queries are the number of DNS queries that the NSD server has received. This metric should be monitored in order to detect any anomalies or unexpected spikes in the number of queries. When monitored, this metric can help detect possible DNS-based attacks, identify misconfigurations, or detect other potential issues.
The zones metric is divided into two categories: master and slave. Master zones are zones that are hosted directly on the NSD server, while slave zones are zones that are hosted on other servers. Monitoring the number of master and slave zones is important in order to ensure that the NSD server is properly configured and is able to handle the load of the zones.
The protocol metric is divided into four categories: UDP, UDP6, TCP, and TCP6. Monitoring the number of queries for each of these protocols is important in order to ensure that the NSD server is properly configured and is able to handle the load of the queries.
The query type metric is the type of query that is sent to the NSD server. Common query types include A, NS, CNAME, SOA, PTR, HINFO, and MX. Monitoring the number of queries for each of these query types is important in order to ensure that the NSD server is properly configured and is able to handle the load of the queries.
The transfer metric is divided into two categories: NOTIFY and AXFR. NOTIFY is used to notify other servers that the NSD server has updated its zone file, while AXFR is used to transfer zone files from one server to another. Monitoring the number of NOTIFY and AXFR requests is important in order to ensure that the NSD server is properly configured and is able to handle the load of the requests.
The return code metric is the return code sent by the NSD server for each request. Common return codes include NOERROR, FORMERR, SERVFAIL, NXDOMAIN, NOTIMP, REFUSED, and YXDOMAIN. Monitoring the return codes from the NSD server is important in order to detect any misconfigurations or other issues that may be causing errors in the responses.