Troubleshoot stale DNS with Ascender Ledger Pro
Greg Sowell uses Ascender Ledger Pro to answer a common question during a DNS server migration: which hosts are still pointing at the old resolvers? Ledger Pro pulls logs from AWX and its derivatives, including Ascender, Ansible Automation Platform, and Tower, and exposes the gathered fact data in a searchable Facts section.
Adding a filter of type fact and typing DNS lists the DNS servers for every host, and the stale address shows up on a single server. The filter can be saved for later use and the results exported as CSV, PDF, or print. Going one step further, he builds a report with a hostname column, a DNS servers fact column, and a filter matching only the stale address, names it Stale DNS Servers, and runs it. Reports can then be scheduled to email whoever needs them on any interval, which turns a one-off check into ongoing tracking of the migration.
Key takeaways
- Ledger Pro ingests logs from AWX and its derivatives, including Ascender, Ansible Automation Platform, and Tower, and exposes the gathered facts for filtering.
- Adding a fact filter for DNS lists the resolvers configured on every host, revealing the one server still using the old address.
- Filters can be saved for reuse and results exported as CSV, PDF, or print.
- A custom report with a DNS servers column and a filter on the stale address can run on demand or be emailed on a schedule.
Questions this video answers
How do I find which servers still use an old DNS server after a migration?
In Ascender Ledger Pro, open the Facts section, add a filter of type fact, and type DNS to list the DNS servers reported by every host. Hosts still showing the old address are the stale ones. The filter can be saved and the results exported as CSV or PDF.
Can Ledger Pro send a recurring report of hosts matching a fact value?
Yes. Create a new report, add columns such as hostname and the DNS servers fact, add a filter for the value you care about, and save it. Once saved, the report can be run at any time or given a schedule that emails it to chosen recipients at whatever interval you need.
About this video
In a normal enterprise, tracking which servers have migrated DNS servers can be tedious, but with Ascender Ledger Pro it can be done in a matter of seconds. Here is a quick demo from Greg Sowell for random fact filtering along with report generation and scheduling. Feel free to contact us to help take control of your automation information.
This video is part of the Ascender Pro playlist. Browse every CIQ video by product and topic.
Transcript
hey everybody I'm Greg Sowell and welcome to another ciq demo today I'm going to be showing you a little bit about Ledger Pro and in this one my challenge is to track down any stale DNS servers so in my scenario I am migrating from one set of DNS servers to another I need to find any of the old ones in there so Ascender Ledger Pro here what it does is it pulls in logs from either amux or any of its derivatives like rser product or maybe AAP or Tower uh or I think Oracle has a flavor as well so it's going to pull
all those logs in consume them and make them easy to use so what am I going to do with that well first and foremost it's pulling in the fact data so I'm going to go to the fact section and I am particularly interested in DNS servers so I'm going to go to add filters I'm going to say of type fact right here in the fact portion I'm just going to type DNS it's going to let me filter down to just the DNS servers now I've got all of them here listed for all of my servers and the ones in particular I'm interested in the stale
ones it's going to be 10.0.2 2.1 so you can see I have one server in here that does still have a stale DNS entry so something I can do with this is this uh filter I created I can um I can actually save that so I can come back and reference this later as we're going through the process once I do have it narrowed down I can and copy this data out I can export as a CSV everybody loves a good CSV PDF or print it right so I can grab all this information but what if I want this to come at me a little
bit more frequently a little bit easier or I want somebody else to be able to use it well I can create a report based on this information so I can come into the report section new report in here I'm going to add a column so what columns do I want to show by default it's got the host names in there I'm going to say uh DNS servers and in here in facts type DNS again because I want that DNS info now I could keep adding those I can shift their order around you can do whatever I want with the information that's displayed but filter is
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where we're going to get a little bit more nitty griding so I want to find just I'm going to type DNS I want to find just those ones that uh are the stale ones so I going to say 10.22 do1 those are going to be the stale ones so DNS server equals 10221 I'm going to add that the sort field fine I'll let it sort by host name up here I'm going to give the reported name so I'm going to call it stale DNS servers and I will save that now I can come into the report section and I can run my stale DNS report
you can see here it is host name Plex 2 and the uh DNS servers you can see I've got them listed right there so all pretty straightforward I still have the same export options or more interestingly I can come in here I can click this and I can add a schedule and I can have this email to whoever I need it to on whatever interval so you can see it's an awesome tool for doing some simple troubleshooting if you have any questions or comments we'd love to hear them if you are interested in Ledger Pro please reach out to us we'd love to uh talk
to you folks and help you through your automation Journey well nothing else happy uh troubleshooting happy uh ledgering and we'll see you next time bye
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