DNS is randomly failing

My hone network is running on my own domain which is sitting on a mail/web server running Windows 2003 Server. The same machine is also providing local DNS services and logon functionality.



Normally everything works well, but during peak loads the DNS server frequently fails. The machine itself should be fast enough to handle the load (+3 GHz P4, 2GB RAM, 1000 MBit LAN, etc.) and so I am a little puzzled why it fails. I also don't really see any entries in the event log even though I configured the DNS service to log any errors (maybe an overload doesn't count as an error?).



Now, I personally don't mind restarting the DNS service when it happens, but my wife is not too happy with that solution (webserver with photo album is nice if everything works, but it is all my fault if she can't surf the internet)...



Basically I am wondering if there is anything I can do to improve this situation. Can I setup a basic failover? Is there maybe a 3rd part tool that would monitor my DNS service and restart it when needed? Or maybe the DNS service could somehow do this by itself?



Open for any suggestions and hoping for some answers.



Thanks,

Jens

What are you running for a DNS server, and how is it configured? you said you setup it to log errors, can you paste those lines from it's config, as they might not be all inclusive.