14 DAY TRIAL // IT professionals can now download a free resource from Microsoft designed to help them monitor the health of their DNS infrastructure.
The DNS Monitoring Management Pack plays nice with a few releases of Windows Server, including Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Server 2008 and Windows Server 2003.
IT pros will be able to find management packs for all the platforms enumerated above in the download provided by the Redmond company free of charge.
“The Windows Server Domain Name System (DNS) Management Pack monitors DNS health, availability, configuration, security, and zone-transfer issues on DNS servers running the Windows Server 2003 and Windows Server 2008 operating systems,” Microsoft explained.
Some admins might already be familiar with past releases of the DNS Monitoring Management Pack, and in this case they could be aware of the fact that the resource is designed to be used with System Center Operations Manager 2007.
According to Microsoft, either the SP1 or SP2 releases with System Center Operations Manager 2007 will do nicely.
“The Windows Server DNS Management Pack also collects performance data that you can use for capacity planning,” the company said.
“By correlating the request rate supported by DNS and the resulting response and resource consumption, administrators can anticipate capacity issues and bring additional DNS servers online before users are negatively affected.”
Along with the actual Management Pack, customers will also be able to download documentation which will guide them when it comes down to making the best out of the resource.
As is the case for the pack, the documentation has had previous releases, having been constantly refreshed in order to keep up with the evolution Windows Server and the IT pros’ needs to keep a close eye on their DNS infrastructure.
The Windows Server DNS 2003/2008/2008 R2 Monitoring Management Pack is available for download here.