---
title: "Configuring DNS Failover"
description: "Edge DNS geo-routing and multiple A records. How to configure failover, and what's not yet available — health-check-based automatic failover with workarounds."
url: https://edge.network/academy/dns-failover/
---

# Configuring DNS Failover

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Featured Guide
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# Configuring DNS Failover

How Edge DNS handles routing and failover — what works today, what doesn't yet, and practical workarounds for high availability.

## What DNS failover is

DNS failover means automatically switching users to a backup server when the primary goes down.
In an ideal setup, a health check detects failure, DNS stops returning the failed server's IP,
and clients resolve to a healthy backup. Users get continuity without manual intervention.

## Edge DNS geo-routing

[Edge DNS](https://edge.network/dns) supports **geo-routing**: routing different users to different servers based
on their location. This works today. You can return IP A for users in Europe and IP B for users
in the Americas, for example. Useful for multi-region deployments where you want users to hit
the nearest origin.

Configure geo-routing in the control panel or via the API. Add A (or AAAA) records with geographic
filters and specify which regions resolve to which IPs.

## Multiple A records for round-robin

You can add multiple A records for the same hostname. Resolvers typically round-robin between them.
This distributes load across several servers but does *not* provide automatic failover:
if one IP is down, clients may still be directed to it. DNS does not remove unhealthy IPs
automatically.

## Monitoring DNS with Edge metrics

Edge provides DNS metrics: query volume, response times, and resolution data. Use these to monitor
DNS health and spot anomalies. They complement application-level monitoring but do not replace
health checks for failover logic.

## Health-check-based failover: not yet implemented

**Important:** Edge DNS does *not* yet support health-check-based automatic
failover. The system does not detect when a server is down and remove it from DNS responses. If you
add multiple A records, they remain in the rotation regardless of server health.

**Workarounds:**

- **External monitoring + API updates** — Use an external monitoring service (e.g. UptimeRobot, Pingdom) to check your endpoints. When a failure is detected, call the Edge API to update DNS records — for example, remove the failed IP or add a CNAME to a backup. Requires automation (a script or Lambda) and API access.
- **CDN as a resilient layer** — Put [Edge CDN](https://edge.network/cdn) in front of your origin. The CDN caches static content and can fail over to a backup origin if configured. For dynamic content, origin health still matters, but the CDN adds redundancy for cached responses.
- **Manual failover** — The control panel and CLI always allow manual record updates. For planned maintenance or known outages, switch records manually. Not automated, but reliable.

## Next steps

[High Availability](https://edge.network/academy/high-availability) [DNS Documentation](https://edge.network/docs/dns)