Knowing about issues early can be the difference between a minor fix and a major outage. Whether it is approaching usage limits, an expiring certificate or a failed zone transfer, early visibility is critical to maintaining reliable services.
The Alert Center in IBM NS1 Connect is designed to keep teams informed in real time, so they can act fast, reduce downtime and maintain reliability across their infrastructure.
What is the Alert Center?
The Alert Center is a centralized hub in the NS1 Connect portal where you can configure and manage alerts related to your account and DNS configuration. You can define what events you care about, when notifications should trigger and who (or what systems) should be notified when something happens.
Alerts are powered by notifier lists, which determines who gets notified and how. Notifications can be sent through multiple channels, including email, Slack, PagerDuty or webhooks. This makes it easy to standardize how alerts are delivered across teams and systems while keeping configuration simple and consistent.
Types of Alerts and Why they Matter
The Alert Center supports several alert types, each designed to surface issues that commonly lead to outages or operational risk.
Get notified when your usage approaches a defined percentage of your plan limit, such as for DNS records, queries, DNS for China queries, Monitors, Filter Chain configurations or Pulsar decisions.
The Alert Center allows you to define custom thresholds, giving you greater control over when alerts are triggered. For example, you can set a ‘heads-up’ alert at 75% usage and a ‘critical’ alert at 95%. These alerts help prevent unexpected service interruptions or overage charges by giving you time to scale or optimize before limits are reached.
SAML/SSO certificate expiration alerts
Receive advance notifications when SSO certificates are nearing expiration helping prevent access disruptions. The first notification can be sent up to 89 days before expiry, with additional reminders at frequent intervals until the expiration date if no action is taken.
URL redirect TLS/SSL certificate expiration alerts
Stay informed if redirect certificates are close to expiring or fail to renew automatically. Certificate expiration alerts can also be triggered by issues relating to DNSSEC configuration, CAA records, rate limit exceeded, configuration issues with zones or AXFR configurations. The first notification can be sent 29 days before the expiry date, with additional reminders at regular intervals until the expiration date if no action is taken.
Incoming zone transfer alerts
Be alerted to issues with incoming zone transfers that could impact DNS availability. An alert for Incoming zone transfer failed is triggered if none of the primary servers can be reached. An alert for an issue with an external primary is triggered whenever there is an issue connecting with one of the primary servers, even if the zone transfer was successful.
Why the Alert Center matters
Modern DNS environments are complex and problems often surface long before users notice them. The Alert Center helps you move from reactive troubleshooting to proactive management by:
Centralizing visibility – all alert configurations and their activity live in one place, making them easier to manage and audit.
Reducing risk and downtime – early warnings about usage limits or expiring certificates allow teams to take corrective action before issues impact customers.
Supporting team workflows – alerts can be delivered through the tools your teams already rely on, such as Slack or PagerDuty.
Enabling automation – Data Feed and webhook notifiers let you connect alerts directly into automation pipelines or external systems for faster remediation.
In short, the Alert Center helps ensure that the right people or systems have the right information at the right time.
How to use the Alert Center
A notifier list can include one or more notifier types, such as email, Slack, PagerDuty or Webhook
Group them into a reusable notifier list.
Multiple lists can be attached to a single alert.
Once you have a notifier list, creating an alert is a guided process:
You can also create multiple alerts for the same resource with different thresholds to get notifications at different stages.
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Monitor and Manage Alerts
This ongoing visibility helps ensure your alerting setup stays accurate as your environment evolves.
NS1 Connect portal and start configuring alerts today to gain greater control, keep your team informed, respond faster and proactively protect your digital infrastructure.
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