In the world of network security and infrastructure, a stable and high-performance DNS solution is essential. Businesses and Internet Service Providers (ISPs) rely on their DNS infrastructure to ensure smooth, secure, and uninterrupted operations.
At PowerDNS, we take great pride in the reliability and robustness of our products. However, demonstrating this reliability can be challenging due to strict NDAs and confidentiality agreements with our customers.
Today, we are celebrating a remarkable achievement that underscores the quality of our software: in over 10 years, we have not received a single Severity 1 (critical) support case from our customers! This milestone is a testament to the stability, security, and performance of our solutions — bringing significant benefits to our customers.
To put this into perspective, here’s how we classify the severity of support requests:
Severity 4 includes general usage questions, recommendations for product enhancements or modifications, documentation issues, translation errors, and other minor concerns. Incidents that involve partial loss of non-critical functionality are classified as Severity 3. These are issues that impair operations but still allow you to continue running their services. Logically, Severity 2 contains serious disruptions. The DNS service experiences repeated and persistent malfunctions, significantly impacting operations.
The most critical category is a Severity 1 support case. This describes a severe issue with an immediate operational impact — one that causes a major outage, preventing customers from conducting business. A Severity 1 incident occurs when the DNS service is largely unavailable, and no workaround exists. As a result, a significant number of DNS requests go unanswered or experience severe performance degradation. Such incidents can lead to substantial financial losses and serious security risks.
Of course, we don’t want to pretend that critical situations never arise. However, these have never been critical in the sense that they cause a major outage and prevent our customers from continuing their business. While of course serious, they have always been, at most, Severity 2 cases.
Still, these cases highlight that DNS infrastructures require continuous optimization, and our team at PowerDNS works closely with customers to fine-tune their implementations, ensuring stability and efficiency.
Should a Severity 1 issue ever arise, you can trust that PowerDNS will act immediately. Within minutes, we proactively reach out to affected customers and assign a dedicated expert to resolve the issue. We are committed to restoring a running system within 2 hours to minimize the impact on operations as quickly as possible. A final solution for any issue in the PowerDNS software will be delivered within 5 days at the latest, either through specific software releases or the implementation of a workaround.
The fact that PowerDNS has not had a single Severity 1 support case in the last ten years is proof that our software solutions meet the highest quality standards. This achievement is no coincidence, but the result of our focus on stable, secure, and high-performance DNS solutions.
As a PowerDNS customer, you benefit from a DNS infrastructure that has proven to be extremely stable and resilient:
Rather than diverting resources toward fixing critical failures, at PowerDNS, we can focus on driving innovation, developing new features, and continuously optimizing existing solutions. This means you benefit from regular updates, new features, and improved performance.
Now, let’s make sure the next 10 years continue just as successfully!