Many issues that users and businesses face are often caused by DNS, as illustrated by one of my favourite troubleshooting tools on the internet – https://isitdns.com/
Mail failures, websites not loading, or even an inability to get into your Managed Desktop, most of the time it’s typically DNS.
What is DNS?
DNS stands for Domain Name System and the easiest way to describe it is like a phone book. Instead of people it’s domains like lucidity.co.nz, and instead of a phone number it’s an IP address (Internet Protocol address). These IP addresses will go to your phone – but in our case it is more than likely a server, which could be hosting your website or email.
So looping back – cool, DNS is a phone book. But with this phone book, it’s got a ton more detail than you’d expect, it’s not just a name and a phone number.
Your DNS for your website, for example Lucidity.co.nz, contains so much information it’s crazy. (https://simpledns.com/help/dns-record-types).
So, a basic setup of DNS for a domain in a business environment includes:
- NS (Name Server) records – which is basically the server which hosts your “contact card” in the phone book
- MX (Mail eXchange) records – which tells the internet where your mail should go
- A (Host address) record – this is basically the location of a server you want the domain to lead to.
So, with these, you’ve got your website, and somewhere for your emails to go. Sweet right!?
It is sweet until it stops working, and you’re left struggling! You’re trying to send an email and it says you don’t exist and then sends the email back to you!
It’s such a frustrating thing and you always suspect something else is at fault! It should be something you just setup properly in the first place and forget about, but in typical IT fashion, it’s never as easy as it seems.
How Lucidity can assist
Lucidity can help you with your DNS woes and manage it properly so you don’t have these issues where it’s “always” DNS? With modern day solutions like Azure DNS, they guarantee you will receive a valid DNS response from one of their 4 provided Name servers which host your DNS. Meaning you’re extremely unlikely to ever have an outage with responses to your DNS.
We at Lucidity also have a rigorous automated process for managing your DNS. This is managed through our cloud portal which is configured and connected to Azure, meaning that you yourself can easily make changes to the Azure DNS without having to go through all the hoops and hurdles of signing in and navigating their (sometimes) difficult to use management tools.
Between this and our team of experts on the wonderful world of DNS, you are safe in the knowledge that If you choose Lucidity as your DNS provider, we’ve got the experience and knowledge to make sure you’re not another statistic on the “Always DNS” issue.
