Eight Ways to Tell if You’re Mr. DNS

There’s a special breed of network administrators out there. They go by many names: Mr. DNS, DNS Queen, the Doctor of DNS. The list goes on but one thing is the same: They are the indispensable source of knowledge around everything DNS. 

Is this you? Here are eight ways to tell if you’re “Mr. DNS”:

1. You’re fluent in Perl, PowerShell, or both. You’ve written more custom scripts than you can remember at this point. For example, the script below is clear as day to you. You even think in Perl or PowerShell sometimes, which is great because you’ve patched a lot of problems quickly and on the fly. Let’s just call this your superpower.
   

   

2. Your cell phone is always running out of battery. No one understands how this is the case. They certainly don’t get the daily flood of DNS service requests that you handle. It becomes pretty easy to miss actual emails at the rate these requests come in. You already feel uncomfortable when your phone gets to 30%, and you know where all the nearest outlets are.
3. You are desensitized to email alerts. When you first started this job, you opened each alert prepared to react as needed. Now, they don’t phase you. Let’s be honest, you probably don’t even notice if you get an alert now. But when something in the DNS infrastructure inevitably goes wrong, you’ll hear it from many other channels. 

4. 

   You’ve memorized IP addresses. Let’s be clear – not an IP range or a single IP address. You know lots of IP addresses off the top of your head. All that time spent on manual configurations has resulted in IPs tattooed onto your brain. You might have even recited them as a party trick. Way to keep your coworkers entertained!

5. You have mixed feelings about the weekend. What do a DNS admin, a poker player, and a bouncer have in common? They all work on weekends. It’s because upgrades and cutovers are scheduled during downtime. It’s optimal for service but it’s not optimal for your schedule. And on the Monday following a cutover weekend, you keep your fingers crossed that nothing goes down. 
6. You’re everyone’s favorite scapegoat. It’s definitely a challenge being responsible for a service that’s either working or not. There’s no gray area. Other teams are quick to point the finger when something goes down. Getting to the root of it is even harder, though. Between combing through logs and reviewing other data, you’re basically on a wild goose chase. 
7. You’re perpetually falling behind. Through no fault of your own, the workload is too much. From digital transformation and strategic initiatives, what that actually means for you every day is that the number of DNS service tickets is growing by the nth degree. It doesn’t help that you’re the last to know about new projects that require infrastructure support. 
8. You worry about your reputation. When everyone either has an emergency or a high priority task, how can you get anything done? Work gets shuffled and it’s hard to make anyone happy. You hesitate when asked to commit to a deadline because you know something is bound to get in the way. Frankly, you just don’t want to make promises you can’t keep.

If you’ve said yes to most of this list, there’s no question you’re Mr. DNS or the DNS Queen!

Check out our ebook “Don’t Rely on Mister DNS” to read about the bigger impact of relying on one person for DNS services, and what it means for the entire organization.