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Black Friday Readiness: Your Definitive DNS Checklist for a Flawless Peak Season

By Claire ODonovan posted yesterday

  

With Black Friday just around the corner, eCommerce teams are gearing up for one of the busiest and most demanding shopping days of the year. Black Friday and Cyber Monday are make or break moments – where milliseconds can mean millions.  

 

During our recent webinar, ‘Don’t let DNS crash your Black Friday’, we explored how DNS plays a critical role in ensuring uptime, performance and customer trust during high-traffic events.  

 
While marketing campaigns and inventory planning often take center stage, DNS is the invisible foundation that determines whether your site is reachable, responsive, and resilient. A single misconfiguration or latency spike can lead to lost revenue, customer churn and lasting brand damage.  

 

To help you prepare, we have compiled a DNS specific checklist for Black Friday, so you can be confident that the foundation of your online presence can handle peak demand without missing a beat.  

 

Black Friday DNS specific Checklist 

 

  1. Use Resilient, Distributed DNS Provider(s) 

  • Avoid single points of failure in DNS resolution. 

  • Consider implementing Dedicated DNS for maximum reliability and performance. 

 

  1. Lower DNS TTLs for Agility 

  • Reduce Time-to-Live (TTL) values on critical DNS records. 

  • Enable rapid propagation of emergency DNS changes. 

  • Begin lowering TTLs at least one week before Black Friday to ensure changes have time to propagate.  

 

  1. Monitor DNS Health and Security 

  • Use query monitoring tools to detect and respond to traffic anomalies in real time.  

  • Track NXDOMAIN and SRVFAIL errors to quickly fix any misconfigurations. 

  • Configure DNSSEC and audit logging for enhanced security. 

 

  1. Validate DNS Configuration and Records 

  • Audit all DNS records for accuracy and relevance. 

  • Remove stale or unused entries and confirm that all failover paths are correctly configured. 

  • Test resolution across multiple geographies to ensure a consistent experience for all users.  

 

  1. Configure DNS Failover with Health Checks 

  • Set up automated health checks and monitor endpoint availability. 

  • Configure your DNS to automatically reroute traffic away from unhealthy servers. 

  • Use fallback pages to maintain brand visibility. 

 

  1. Implement DNS-Based Load Balancing 

  • Use round-robin, weighted, or GeoDNS strategies to optimize traffic flow.  

  • Distribute traffic across servers or regions to prevent any single server from becoming a bottleneck. 

  • Improve global performance and reduce latency by distributing traffic intelligently. 

 

By working through this checklist, you will significantly reduce your risk and ensure your brand delivers a fast, seamless, and reliable experience during the busiest and most profitable time of the year.  

 

With NS1 Connect, you can confidently scale, steer traffic intelligently and stay online when it matters most. 

 

You can watch the full webinar on-demand here: Don’t let DNS crash your Black Friday 


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https://community.ibm.com/community/user/blogs/claire-odonovan/2025/08/18/black-friday-readiness-dns-checklist