Cloudns.net - October graphs and statistics

October has been really stable and there were just few outages, really little time and always just one of 7 servers. Therefore no service have been affected in any way. The only problem was PNS2 which had 4+ hours of outage in one period. That could be a bit problematic for those who changed their domain settings in same time as it would synchronize all servers except the PNS2. I like Cloundns.net improved stability and service a lot.

NS1

NS2

NS3

NS4

PNS1

PNS2

PNS3

Cloudns.net service availability update

It has been long time since last Cloudns.net service availability update. So here you go, these are Icinga statistics for last 31 days for all Cloudns.net DNS servers:

DNS-cloudns-ns1	100.000% (100.000%)	0.000% (0.000%)	0.000% (0.000%)	0.000%
DNS-cloudns-ns2	96.517% (96.517%)	3.483% (3.483%)	0.000% (0.000%)	0.000%
DNS-cloudns-ns3	99.927% (99.927%)	0.073% (0.073%)	0.000% (0.000%)	0.000%
DNS-cloudns-ns4	100.000% (100.000%)	0.000% (0.000%)	0.000% (0.000%)	0.000%
DNS-cloudns-pns1	99.952% (99.952%)	0.048% (0.048%)	0.000% (0.000%)	0.000%
DNS-cloudns-pns2	100.000% (100.000%)	0.000% (0.000%)	0.000% (0.000%)	0.000%
DNS-cloudns-pns3	100.000% (100.000%)	0.000% (0.000%)	0.000% (0.000%)	0.000%

I hope that helps you with the decision whether to use or not Cloudns.net and whether to go with free servers or pay small additional fee for premium servers.

I have to say, I think they improved their service massively. We shall see how it goes in future.

Cloudns.net down again - DDoS attack again?

Few questions first:

1. Who hates Cloudns.net so much that every week or two they are under DDoS attack? 
2. Who have resources for such attack every time and repeat it so often?
3. How is it possible that of 5 servers at least 3 or more can be down?

And now stats from Icinga, it will tell you more than just words:

NS1.CLOUDNS.NET

NS2.CLOUDNS.NET

NS3.CLOUDNS.NET

NS4.CLOUDNS.NET

PNS1.CLOUDNS.NET

And now the main problem: With one server running there is a good chance your websites and emails will work fine BUT if you do any change to domain settings they will not synchronize correctly and you will have DNS zones split. Just try http://www.intodns.com.

This makes this service unusable, really. 

This is not the first time this happened, nor it will be last. People (or maybe one person) from Cloudns.net dont have enough skills, or money, or time, or all to make this service 100%. I guess it is money first, for such a price (free or really cheap money for premium) they cant have loadbalancers, firewalls and technology to stop DDoS. And someone really hates them. Other Nameserver provider? Make your own guess.

Cloudns.net - additional experience & Godaddy Premium DNS comparison

Since March I have learned new things about Cloudns.net. First of all I have to say that I like it a lot. But there is one big problem. Reaction time. I don't know why is that but they seem to have periodic problems with the service. It might be DDoS attack, it might be technical problems or maybe something else. Really big issue is that it always takes more than few hours for them to even start to solve the problem. If you are using only and only Cloudns.net services you might be in for trouble.

The best practice for me over the time is to have one additional DNS server. With the prices so low for linux virtuals you can simply pick provider, setup any Linux (I prefer debian and bind combination) and create secondary DNS server. It should cost you really minimum but you will keep your NS servers alive all the time.

Once frustrated with the Cloudns.net service I have decided to use Anycast Premium DNS from Godaddy. But it was such awful experience that just after two days I have asked for refund. Few points I dont like about Premium DNS:

• Only two Nameservers - this might be enough but I live by saying more is better
• Vanity servers - this is really showstopper for me. You can use vanity servers only for domains hosted by GoDaddy.com. What is the point? Cloudns.net is not asking about domains and their registration. You have it, you setup Cloudns.net nameservers (or vanity nameservers) and that's it.
• Unbelievably slow and difficult to use control panel - Where was the UX designer when they developed Godaddy.com control panel? It is really difficult to use. And I have been using them for over 4 years for domains. Showing control panel to my wife I realized she couldnt move there and find anything I asked for. Fail.

Overall, I like Cloudns.net and they have added new servers and promised to make sure they will completely stop service failures. We shall see, I have my own backup DNS server so I can sleep much better now.

Cloudns.net DNS management service - experience

I have been using paid version of this service for some time and I think I have enough information and experience with the service to describe it to others. Some facts:

• free or paid version
• paid version is very cheap
• it is not anycast (go and try godaddy.com)

I dont know whether to start with good or bad. So I guess I'll start with bad things:

• Seems to be popular target for DDoS attacks, so far there was one 12 hour failure (sometime between Christmas and New Year's Eve)
• Very slow to respond to any questions or suggestions
• Main NS1 machine is the same one as API/web control panel machine
• It doesnt have templates (yet, but not showstopper as you can copy records mega quickly. see good things.).

50/50 things:

• because they are slow to respond you just hope there is no technical problem. they have 4 servers on quick lines so intodns.com is really giving good results with cloudns.net. if all works (which it does most of the time)
• stability? it seems like small company or clever individual effort, so dont know what happens if something happens? They seem to be improving constantly so for now I have all domain with them. I just exported all records into bind back files and if something happens I will be back in no time with other provider. I have also 5th nameserver which is mine which mirrors all records.

Good things:

• It is cheap, mega cheap for that service 
• It has 4 independent nameservers
• You can create vanity servers
• You can easily import existing bind zones
• You can see live statistics for your domain
• You can specify all sorts of settings (A, AAAA, CNAME, MX,  TXT, NS, SRV, web redirects)
• It is fast (if it isnt under DDoS attack). Working with control panel is approximately 1000x quicker than Godaddy.com control panel. You can easily copy all required records between domains, it is really fast and quick.
• You can create Cloud domains. Basically you create one domain and all records and if you have other domains with exactly same settings you just put them into domain cloud and they all work immediately with same records.

I hope this helps you with potential dns hosting selection. There are more services online but I am quite happy with cloudns.net. I have been using them since december 2010 and so far they had 3 ddos attacks I am aware of. The first one was really bad but it seems that they learnt good deal about how to secure their servers and other attacks were problems free and all worked well (except control panel, but zones were working correctly)

For questions please use discussion