PowerDNS monitoring with Netdata

What is PowerDNS?

PowerDNS is a DNS server that provides authoritative DNS services for the internet. It is highly reliable, scalable, and secure, and supports a wide range of back-end databases, programming languages, and is available for various operating systems. PowerDNS allows you to create custom DNS records and securely manage DNS zones.

Monitoring PowerDNS with Netdata

The prerequisites for monitoring PowerDNS with Netdata are to have PowerDNS 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 PowerDNS monitoring please read the collector documentation.

You should now see the PowerDNS 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.

What PowerDNS metrics are important to monitor - and why?

Questions In

Questions In is a metric that measures the number of incoming DNS queries for PowerDNS Authoritative Server. It is measured in questions/second, and takes into account both UDP and TCP queries. This metric provides a glimpse into the amount of requests the server is receiving and can be used to identify potential performance issues due to an increase in requests. Monitoring this metric can help detect potential problems with the server, such as overloaded resources or an increased load due to a sudden surge in traffic.

Questions Out

Questions Out is a metric that measures the number of outgoing DNS queries for PowerDNS Authoritative Server. It is measured in questions/second, and takes into account both UDP and TCP queries. This metric provides insight into the amount of requests being answered by the server and can be used to identify any issues such as a slow response time or an overloaded server. Monitoring this metric can help detect potential problems with the server and help prevent any potential service outages due to an increased load.

Cache Usage

Cache Usage is a metric that measures the number of cache hits and misses for PowerDNS Authoritative Server. It is measured in events/second and takes into account hits and misses for the query-cache, packet-cache, key-cache and meta-cache. This metric provides insight into the efficiency of the server’s caching mechanism and can be used to identify any potential issues that could be causing an inefficient cache usage. Monitoring this metric can help detect any potential issues with the caching mechanism and help improve the overall performance of the server.

Cache Size

Cache Size is a metric that measures the size of the cache for PowerDNS Authoritative Server. It is measured in entries and takes into account the query-cache, packet-cache, key-cache and meta-cache. This metric provides insight into the size of the cache and can be used to identify any potential issues that could be causing a bottleneck due to an inadequate cache size. Monitoring this metric can help detect any potential issues with the cache size and help prevent any potential service outages due to an inadequate cache size.

Latency

Latency is a metric that measures the time taken for the server to respond to a DNS query for PowerDNS Authoritative Server. It is measured in microseconds and provides insight into the response time of the server. This metric can be used to identify any potential issues with the server, such as slow response times or an overloaded server. Monitoring this metric can help detect any potential issues with the server and help prevent any potential service outages due to slow response times.

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