Route 53 DNS Monitoring
CloudWatch-native DNS observability for AWS Route 53 query logs.
Turn real resolver traffic into metrics, alarms, dashboards, and Contributor Insights
so on-call can answer: what failed, where it’s happening, what changed, and what’s driving it.
Choose the right depth for your environment: NXDOMAIN for targeted NXDOMAIN coverage, or Pro for broader DNS signals and investigation tooling.
Incident triage
Find “what changed” fast
Investigation
Top drivers via CI packs
Data boundary
Logs stay in your AWS
Why Route 53 DNS Monitoring?
DNS incidents rarely present as “DNS is down.” They look like partial failures, regressions, or configuration drift:
- rising latency as resolvers retry and back off
- sporadic 5xx where only some clients, edges, or regions are impacted
- failed deployments caused by missing records or incorrect names
- silent misroutes and stale caching that degrade reliability over time
Codreum is built for operator workflows: alert on the signals that matter, surface top drivers, and keep observability and routing inside AWS.
Why CloudWatch (in-account)?
External DNS checkers are useful, but they typically probe from a small set of locations and can’t see your real resolver traffic patterns.
- uses Route 53 query logs already stored in CloudWatch Logs
- observes failures from actual clients, not just synthetic probes
- investigates by top domain, query type, edge, or source
- avoids exporting DNS logs to third parties
Privacy note: DNS logs stay in your AWS account. Codreum does not receive your DNS logs.
How this fits alongside Cisco / F5 / Infoblox
Codreum Route 53 DNS Monitoring is an observability layer for AWS Route 53 query logs. It does not replace authoritative DNS, DNS security gateways, traffic management, or IPAM/DHCP platforms. Teams use Codreum to add AWS-native monitoring and incident workflows on top of Route 53.
| Area | Cisco / F5 / Infoblox (typical use) | Codreum (Route 53 DNS Monitoring) |
|---|---|---|
| Primary role | DNS serving, security controls, traffic management, and DNS/IP workflows (varies by product) | Monitoring and incident response for Route 53 DNS behavior |
| Deployment model | Appliance, VM, or SaaS with integration into your environment | Terraform-deployed AWS resources in your account |
| Data boundary | Often centralized dashboards or collectors (deployment-dependent) | Logs, metrics, alarms, and dashboards remain in your AWS account |
| Operations | Vendor tooling and workflows | AWS-native operations: CloudWatch + SNS / EventBridge / Lambda / Chatbot |
| Best fit | Enterprise DNS platforms across hybrid environments | AWS teams standardizing on CloudWatch signals for Route 53 |
If you already run Cisco, F5, or Infoblox, keep using them for core DNS services. Codreum focuses on Route 53 visibility and on-call readiness without introducing a separate monitoring stack.
Feature comparison
| Capability | NXDOMAIN | Pro |
|---|---|---|
| NXDOMAIN alarms + anomaly detection | ✓ | ✓ |
| NXDOMAIN Contributor Insights (Top-N rules) | ✓ | ✓ |
| NXDOMAIN dashboards (Zone/VPC baseline) | ✓ | ✓ |
| Additional DNS signals (SERVFAIL/REFUSED/etc.) | — | ✓ |
| Per-zone metrics / alarms / CI toggles | — | ✓ |
| Built-in SNS presets (Email / Slack / SMS) | — | ✓ |
| Multi-zone IDs in one deployment | — | ✓ |
| Advanced dashboards (Ops / Investigations / Forensics) | — | ✓ |
| Support / SLA | — | ✓ |
What you get (Pro)
Dashboards
- DNS Ops Landing — fleet health and SLO tiles
- DNS Ops Investigations — cross-zone hotspots and drill-ins
- DNS Ops Deep Forensics — longer-window breakdowns for incident review
- Per-zone dashboards and per-zone Top-N drilldowns
Signals
- Success %, client error %, and non-NXDOMAIN client error %
- NXDOMAIN / SERVFAIL / REFUSED tracking
- TCP share and protocol indicators (e.g., EDNS downgrade)
- Contributor Insights packs for “what changed / who’s driving it”
Deploy with Terraform
You deploy into your AWS account using Terraform. Codreum Registry is private; the portal issues a short-lived connect code
so you can use registry.codreum.com safely without exposing long-lived secrets in the browser.