Delivering applications using outdated infrastructure and tools can limit an IT department’s ability to innovate and deploy at a global scale. To overcome that issue and improve business metrics, IT folks are modernizing domain name system (DNS) services. One such platform is the NS1 Managed DNS, which helps enterprises realize dramatic gains in user experience, IT efficiency, and application reliability. PeerSpot members are sharing how the solution is helping them transform their organizations.
DNS Management and its Role in IT Operations
DNS is one of the most critical pieces of infrastructure in today's IT environment because it is ubiquitous. Pretty much every system and application in your enterprise now uses DNS to connect. Because of this, DNS issues can now bring down some of your most mission-critical tools, not just your external website.
On the positive side, though, DNS can be used as a simple, efficient and omnipresent layer for communication. With the right DNS solution in place, you can efficiently steer traffic away from unhealthy endpoints to avoid downtime for your end-users, implement a multi-CDN strategy, connect various SaaS and cloud providers, and more.
Key Use Cases for Managed DNS
PeerSpot members are utilizing NS1 Managed DNS in a wide variety of use cases. For instance, Sargurunathan M., a technical lead-production engineer at a media company, uses NS1 as the first point of contact in two ways. He said, “We use the Managed DNS product and the Dedicated DNS product, which gives us redundancy. Our primary use case is for getting users to the CDN [content delivery network] that is best suited for each user.”
An engineering manager at a software company uses Managed DNS as a software-as-a-service (SaaS), while also partially using functionality from some of NS1’s other products like Pulsar. He explained, “We generate a DNS map and upload it to NS1 using their API to propagate to their service. Then we use Managed DNS to find the optimal route for our users to connect to the closest point of presence for them.” For a director of site reliability engineering at a media company, NS1 serves as their public DNS. He stated, “We have around 500 domains that we service through it. It is the public resolver for our website and various other entities we own.”
Positive Outcomes with Managed DNS
Better Business and Network Resilience
NS1’s Managed DNS solution ensures the availability of internet services with highly available, DDoS-resilient, low-latency, global DNS infrastructure. According to James M., the VP of technical operations and DevOps at a consultancy, his company’s response times have improved significantly with NS1. They are also now largely unaffected by major DDoS attacks thanks to NS1’s resilient architecture. He said, “We needed to have the fastest and most secure and resilient DNS possible, and that's what we got. We don't worry about denial of service attacks on the DNS, as we've seen other large vendors go through. We have access to a significant and forward-thinking feature set that allows us to use things like DNSSEC [domain name system security extensions] fairly easily.”
The media company’s director of site reliability engineering is also happy to declare they haven't had any issues with uptime when there is a DDoS attack. He stated,
“When we have been the subject of an attack, NS1 has been up and stable for us, as well as performant. On top of that, it has been able to provide us with pretty good details of what kinds of attacks we have been subject to and what NS1 was doing at the time. Even if we are undergoing DDoS attacks, NS1 will still serve DNS for us.”
Stronger System Performance and IT Operational Efficiency
Transitioning to a managed DNS solution improves performance, reliability, and security and drives efficiency and automation. In this context, NS1 Managed DNS has allowed James M.’s company to eliminate maintenance work. He explained, “Being able to use an API versus manual maintenance means that we don't really have to do any maintenance. We've been given a solution that allows us to automate everything that we need to do.” And, by no longer having to focus on maintenance work, he can assign staff to other tasks. “Time is saved because we don't really use manual processes with the DNS. We try to automate everything we do in the DevOps team, so this has been effective for us.”
The software company engineering manager similarly reported that DNS response times have improved and DNS maintenance has been reduced in his organization. He remarked, “We automated the entire workflow on our site. Its automation has absolutely enabled us to assign staff to other work. Automation is always good, and we can reinvest the time of our engineers.”
Improved End-User Application Experiences
A managed DNS improves user experience on business-critical websites, applications, and content and streaming services with best-in-class DNS response times and intelligent routing to the best available resource. For instance, Sargurunathan M. wholeheartedly felt that NS1 has improved his company’s end-user experience. He said, “Knowing the DNS delivery part is taken care of is important; performance is very critical. Taking users to the right CDN or data center is very important for the end-user experience. NS1 is part of the set of tools we have to achieve that better user experience and to get them to the right place.”
The software company engineering manager concurred, saying, “Managed DNS helped improve our end-user experience. It reduced our latency dramatically, and our users' experience is much better now. Latency is not the only metric that it has impacted. It has also impacted reliability. We didn't have any major incidents while using NS1 all this time. Our company's SLA is 99.99%, and we can easily maintain it with NS1.”
DNS is critical to the successful modernization of IT operations. As PeerSpot users have shared, an effective DNS helps improve resiliency for the business and the network and enables stronger system performance and IT operational efficiency. A good DNS also translates into improved end-user experiences with applications.