status.gitlab.com is not properly configured to use CNAME–the page will not resolve if IPs for the CNAME change
status.io instructs us to use a CNAME
to 34754878.hostedstatus.com
. But, we're already using a TXT record for the subdomain to allow for email sends, and therefore we cannot add a CNAME to the subdomain.
This is presumably because the TXT record for gitlab.com is at a character limit and we're no longer able to add additional spf
records for more email providers. See https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/gl-infra/infrastructure/issues/7494.
Today, 10 August 2019, we received a report in Slack that status.gitlab.com was not resolving. The subdomain is configured to use A records, rather than the instructed CNAME. From what I could gather running some traceroute
and dig
commands status.io moved the hostedstatus.com subdomains behind Cloudfront and the underlying IPs changed.
I've repeated the setup, using the new IPs. This is fragile and we could break again. We need to properly configure this so we don't need to worry about DNS resolution when status.io makes changes.