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DNS health checks

Monitoring A and AAAA targets from three regions in Expanse Panel—protocols, intervals, alerts, and status meanings.

DNS health checks

DNS health checks watch a specific A or AAAA record in your zone. From three geographic regions, Expanse probes the IP address that record resolves to, using TCP, HTTP, or HTTPS so you know if the service behind that IP is reachable.

What they are good for

  • Knowing when a web or app server stops responding even if DNS itself is still correct.
  • Getting email or webhook alerts when status goes bad or recovers (configured per check).

How to configure one

  1. Open the zone from Networking.
  2. Go to the Health checks tab.
  3. Create a check tied to an existing A or AAAA record (the product only supports these types for probing).
  4. Choose:
    • Protocol — TCP (open port), HTTP, or HTTPS.
    • Port — defaults to 80 for HTTP/TCP-style use and 443 for HTTPS unless you set another allowed port.
    • Path — for HTTP/HTTPS, the path on the server (for example / or /health).
    • Interval — how often to run the check. Expanse Panel offers 60 seconds, 3 minutes (180 s), or 5 minutes (300 s).
  5. Optionally set alert email and/or alert webhook URL to receive notifications.
  6. Enable or disable the check as needed.

Only one health check per DNS record (same name and type) is allowed—duplicate checks are rejected.

Regions

Checks run from three regions (for example Frankfurt, Singapore, and New York). The panel shows per-region results on recent runs so you can see if a problem is global or regional.

Alerts and webhooks

  • Email: optional address per check; used when the product sends alert messages.
  • Webhook: optional HTTPS URL; the system can POST alert payloads when status changes (use your own endpoint to log incidents or notify chat).

Down alerts are designed not to spam: repeat notifications while still down may be throttled (for example at most about once per hour for the same failing state—exact timing is managed by the product).

Status meanings

StatusMeaning
UPAll monitored regions succeeded on the last aggregate evaluation—service looks healthy from Expanse’s probes.
DEGRADEDOne region failed; others succeeded. Often a routing or regional outage, not necessarily total failure.
DOWNTwo or more regions failed—the check treats the target as broadly unavailable.
UNKNOWNNo reliable current result—common when a check was just created, disabled, or probes cannot run yet (for example missing valid target IP or checks paused). Do not treat UNKNOWN as “up.”

Status is derived from recent probe successes and failures across regions; brief blips may stabilize after the next interval.

Alert emails and similar messages may include a direct link back to the zone’s health-check tab so you can open the right place quickly.

Permissions

Creating or editing checks requires the same kind of team permission as changing DNS. Read-only roles may only view results.