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Lately my number one bloody cause of downtime has been DNS lookup failures. I switched to Cloudflare hoping to avoid this. If I can't trust Cloudflare, then w

Lately my number one bloody cause of downtime has been DNS lookup failures. I switched to Cloudflare hoping to avoid this. If I can't trust Cloudflare, then who the heck can I trust? Also, is there any way to actually resolve this issue quickly while Cloudflare deals with their fuckup? I don't like being at the mercy of their support team while my site has literal downtime.

rdl 11y ago
We should have it fixed very shortly; 99.9% on the cause.
colinbartlett 11y ago
I use DNSimple and they have a feature that lets you sync to another provider. I have not used it but, as I understand it, the feature helps you setup slave servers which respond to Notify messages from DNSimple. That way, if they go down, your slave provider will keep things up.
laumars 11y ago
You could always run your own DNS server. Of course, you'd then lose the other services Cloudflare offer like basic DDoS protection, but that's the trade off you'd have to consider.
elmin 11y ago
I've never had any trouble with Amazon Route53.
- zrail 11y ago
  That's because Route53 is basically bullet proof, such that their SLA guarantees 100% availability. I have switched everything I touch to Route53 and have had zero issues.
rdl 11y ago
In this case you would have been unaffected if you used CloudFlare for DNS, rather than using Dyn for DNS and CNAME from CloudFlare to it. Using CloudFlare for DNS is our preferred configuration.
toomuchtodo 11y ago
> Also, is there any way to actually resolve this issue quickly while Cloudflare deals with their fuckup? Learn basic troubleshooting so you can determine which vendor is the problem (ie not Cloudflare in this case).
troydavis 11y ago
We had the same question and concluded that the only reasonable way to say more than "Well, we hope this doesn't happen again" was using 2 different authoritative DNS providers (both anycasted). Details: http://blog.papertrailapp.com/dns-outage-on-monday-december-1-2014/ http://blog.papertrailapp.com/dns-outage-on-monday-december-... It's not a question of trust; at some point, any single provider will get DDoSed or have an operational bug. The only question is whether you're willing to accept that. If you are, then try to pick one great provider. If you're not, and are willing to spend a little time to avoid this problem, try to pick two great providers. Since then, DNSimple has made primary/secondary providers even easier: https://support.dnsimple.com/articles/secondary-dns/ https://support.dnsimple.com/articles/secondary-dns/ Basically, if you don't want this problem, don't pick one provider. It's not bulletproof, but it's a lot closer.

rdl 11y ago

We should have it fixed very shortly; 99.9% on the cause.

colinbartlett 11y ago

I use DNSimple and they have a feature that lets you sync to another provider. I have not used it but, as I understand it, the feature helps you setup slave servers which respond to Notify messages from DNSimple. That way, if they go down, your slave provider will keep things up.

laumars 11y ago

You could always run your own DNS server. Of course, you'd then lose the other services Cloudflare offer like basic DDoS protection, but that's the trade off you'd have to consider.

elmin 11y ago

I've never had any trouble with Amazon Route53.

zrail 11y ago
That's because Route53 is basically bullet proof, such that their SLA guarantees 100% availability. I have switched everything I touch to Route53 and have had zero issues.

rdl 11y ago

In this case you would have been unaffected if you used CloudFlare for DNS, rather than using Dyn for DNS and CNAME from CloudFlare to it. Using CloudFlare for DNS is our preferred configuration.

toomuchtodo 11y ago

> Also, is there any way to actually resolve this issue quickly while Cloudflare deals with their fuckup? Learn basic troubleshooting so you can determine which vendor is the problem (ie not Cloudflare in this case).

troydavis 11y ago

We had the same question and concluded that the only reasonable way to say more than "Well, we hope this doesn't happen again" was using 2 different authoritative DNS providers (both anycasted). Details: http://blog.papertrailapp.com/dns-outage-on-monday-december-1-2014/ http://blog.papertrailapp.com/dns-outage-on-monday-december-... It's not a question of trust; at some point, any single provider will get DDoSed or have an operational bug. The only question is whether you're willing to accept that. If you are, then try to pick one great provider. If you're not, and are willing to spend a little time to avoid this problem, try to pick two great providers. Since then, DNSimple has made primary/secondary providers even easier: https://support.dnsimple.com/articles/secondary-dns/ https://support.dnsimple.com/articles/secondary-dns/ Basically, if you don't want this problem, don't pick one provider. It's not bulletproof, but it's a lot closer.