There a few approaches to take when monitoring DNS with up.time: monitoring the process count, connecting to the port to ensure availability, and log monitoring to track any errors.
Process count
- The up.time Monitoring Station includes a Process Count Check monitor which, given a process name and threshold value, will collect the number of occurrences of the specified process. This service monitor requires that up.time Agent be installed on the target server.
http://docs.uptimesoftware.com/display/UT/Agent+Monitors#AgentMonitors-ProcessCountCheck
Port availability
- The DNS service monitor issue a request similar to nslookup against the specified server and thresholds can be configured based on the response from the server.
http://docs.uptimesoftware.com/display/UT/Network+Service+Monitors
Log monitoring
- Log monitoring is accomplished with a Plugin service monitor. Plugin service monitors are available on the up.time Grid website and extend the out of the box functionality of up.time. Either the Enhanced Log File Monitor or UNIX Log Scanner plugin monitors would achieve this.
http://support.uptimesoftware.com/the-grid/mod_view.php?mod_id=25
http://support.uptimesoftware.com/the-grid/mod_view.php?mod_id=52