The managed-prometheus-exporter-dns repository is a Python-based Prometheus exporter designed to monitor DNS latency within OpenShift environments. It serves as a specialized monitoring tool for managed services, providing network observability through DNS resolution metrics that help operators understand domain resolution performance and service health.
The exporter operates on a straightforward monitoring principle: every minute, it attempts to resolve redhat.com and measures the time required to complete the DNS lookup. This regular testing provides continuous visibility into DNS performance. The exporter tracks two primary metrics. The dns_latency_milliseconds metric captures the time spent resolving DNS queries, while dns_failure_failure_total counts the total number of DNS errors encountered during tests. Both metrics reset each time the test is installed or restarted, providing fresh baseline measurements after deployment or service restarts.
Alerting is built into the monitoring strategy. An alert named DNSLatency200ms triggers when DNS resolution for the last five minutes averages above 200 milliseconds, establishing a clear performance threshold for DNS operations. This alert mechanism enables operators to respond quickly to degraded DNS performance that could impact cluster operations and application availability.
The installation process leverages OpenShift's declarative configuration approach through templated YAML manifests. Users employ a provided Makefile to render various templates into OpenShift-compatible manifests, which can then be applied using standard tools like oc apply. This templating approach ensures consistency and reduces manual configuration errors during deployment.
The Makefile includes three utility targets beyond the primary rendering function. The clean target removes rendered manifest files, allowing users to reset their deployment state. The filelist target displays all YAML files present in the deploy directory, providing visibility into generated artifacts. The resourcelist target echoes a comprehensive list of OpenShift and Kubernetes objects created by the manifests, which proves valuable for operators needing to understand or remove the complete installation footprint.
The repository is classified within multiple relevant domains including Prometheus exporter functionality, DNS monitoring, metrics collection, OpenShift integration, managed services, domain resolution tracking, service health assessment, network observability, Kubernetes operations, and performance analytics. This broad classification reflects the tool's role as a bridge between low-level DNS performance data and higher-level cluster health monitoring.
Prometheus rules for this exporter are maintained separately in the openshift/managed-cluster-config repository, following a modular approach where alerting logic is centralized in a dedicated configuration repository. This separation of concerns allows the exporter code to focus on metric collection while alert definitions evolve independently.
The exporter is tagged with the osdv4 topic, indicating its association with OpenShift Dedicated v4 environments. This positioning suggests the tool is specifically designed for managed OpenShift deployments where DNS performance monitoring is critical for maintaining service level agreements and cluster reliability. By providing granular DNS latency metrics and automated alerting, the exporter enables proactive detection and response to DNS-related issues before they impact application performance or cluster operations.
