One of our customers has setup a handy DNS checking tool, which doesn’t require a subscription payment.   It’s handy for diagnosing DNS issues, including Parent servers, SOA and NS records, and also MX and WWW.

You can find the tool at http://www.checkmydns.biz/

Daniel Keighron-Foster, Technical Director.

Sun engineer Brendan Gregg has made an interesting discovery, posted on his blog (with youtube attachment of course) at http://blogs.sun.com/brendan/entry/unusual_disk_latency, that disks suffer high I/O latency when subjected to vocal outbursts.

Something to bear in mind the next time your server has you in a fit of rage