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A name has a CNAME alongside other records

HighConfirmedQuick windns.health.cname-with-other-data

What this check looks for

One of your names is both an alias and a real record at the same time. The DNS does not allow that, and different resolvers resolve it differently, so the name works for some people and not for others.

Why it matters

There is no correct behaviour for a resolver here, so behaviour varies by vendor and by version. That produces a fault nobody can reproduce: it works from the office, fails from a phone, and every individual test looks fine.

When the check passes, your report says: “Every alias stands on its own, as the DNS requires”.

What it costs your score

When this check fails it removes 12 points from your DNS score, before the status, confidence and repeat multipliers are applied. DNS carries a weight of 10 in the overall score.

It shares the dns.health.zone family ceiling of 20 points: however many findings that family produces, together they cannot remove more than that from DNS. One underlying problem showing up in several places is still one problem.

Severity
high
Default confidence
confirmed
Status when triggered
fail
Deduction
12 points
Family cap
dns.health.zone · 20
Category
DNS
Module
Dns health
Fix owned by
dns host
In the ruleset since
2026.09

How the whole score is calculated

How to fix it

Delete either the CNAME or the other records at that name.

A name cannot be both an alias and a record; resolvers disagree about which wins.

  1. Decide what the name should be: an alias to another host, or a record of its own.

  2. If it should be an alias, delete the A/AAAA/TXT records at that name.

  3. If it should be a record, delete the CNAME.

  4. Re-test; resolvers may hold the conflicting answer until its TTL expires.

How to confirm it worked

  • dig +short CNAME ‹record name› — expect either an alias or no answer, never both

The configuration to publish
{{recordName}}. 3600 IN A {{ipv4}}

A named slot like ‹domain› — and the braces left in the configuration below — is filled in with your own values when this rule appears on a report.

Technical detail

‹conflict list›. RFC 1034 §3.6.2 states that if a CNAME is present at a name, no other data may be, and RFC 2181 §10.1 repeats it without exception. The usual cause is an alias added at a name that already had an address record, with the control panel accepting both. Delete whichever of the two is not wanted; keeping both is not an option the protocol offers.

Standards and references

Test this on your domain

Run the check that produces this finding, on its own, against any domain.

Open the dns health checkerBuild the fix

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