COREDNS-CACHE(7) CoreDNS Plugins COREDNS-CACHE(7) NAME cache - enables a frontend cache. DESCRIPTION With cache enabled, all records except zone transfers and metadata records will be cached for up to 3600s. Caching is mostly useful in a scenario when fetching data from the backend (upstream, database, etc.) is expensive. Cache will pass DNSSEC (DNSSEC OK; DO) options through the plugin for up- stream queries. This plugin can only be used once per Server Block. SYNTAX cache [TTL] [ZONES...] * TTL max TTL in seconds. If not specified, the maximum TTL will be used, which is 3600 for NOERROR responses and 1800 for denial of existence ones. Setting a TTL of 300: cache 300 would cache records up to 300 seconds. * ZONES zones it should cache for. If empty, the zones from the configu- ration block are used. Each element in the cache is cached according to its TTL (with TTL as the max). Note that TTL only caps the cache duration and does not extend it. A record with a 30s TTL will still be cached for 30s even with cache 600. The minimum cache duration defaults to 5 seconds and can be adjusted per cache type using MINTTL in the success or denial directives. A cache is divided into 256 shards, each holding up to 39 items by default - for a total size of 256 * 39 = 9984 items. If you want more control: cache [TTL] [ZONES...] { success CAPACITY [TTL] [MINTTL] denial CAPACITY [TTL] [MINTTL] prefetch AMOUNT [[DURATION] [PERCENTAGE%]] serve_stale [DURATION] [REFRESH_MODE] servfail DURATION disable success|denial [ZONES...] keepttl } * TTL and ZONES as above. * success, override the settings for caching successful responses. CAPAC- ITY indicates the maximum number of packets we cache before we start evicting (randomly). TTL overrides the cache maximum TTL. MINTTL over- rides the cache minimum TTL (default 5), which can be useful to limit queries to the backend. * denial, override the settings for caching denial of existence re- sponses. CAPACITY indicates the maximum number of packets we cache be- fore we start evicting (LRU). TTL overrides the cache maximum TTL. MINTTL overrides the cache minimum TTL (default 5), which can be useful to limit queries to the backend. There is a third category (error) but those responses are never cached. * prefetch will prefetch popular items when they are about to be expunged from the cache. Popular means AMOUNT queries have been seen with no gaps of DURATION or more between them. DURATION defaults to 1m. Prefetching will happen when the TTL drops below PERCENTAGE, which de- faults to 10%, or latest 1 second before TTL expiration. Values should be in the range [10%, 90%]. Note the percent sign is mandatory. PER- CENTAGE is treated as an int. * serve_stale, when serve_stale is set, cache will always serve an ex- pired entry to a client if there is one available as long as it has not been expired for longer than DURATION (default 1 hour). By default, the cache plugin will attempt to refresh the cache entry after sending the expired cache entry to the client. The responses have a TTL of 0. RE- FRESH_MODE controls the timing of the expired cache entry refresh. verify will first verify that an entry is still unavailable from the source before sending the expired entry to the client. immediate will immediately send the expired entry to the client before checking to see if the entry is available from the source. REFRESH_MODE defaults to im- mediate. Setting this value to verify can lead to increased latency when serving stale responses, but will prevent stale entries from ever being served if an updated response can be retrieved from the source. * servfail cache SERVFAIL responses for DURATION. Setting DURATION to 0 will disable caching of SERVFAIL responses. If this option is not set, SERVFAIL responses will be cached for 5 seconds. DURATION may not be greater than 5 minutes. * disable disable the success or denial cache for the listed ZONES. If no ZONES are given, the specified cache will be disabled for all zones. * keepttl do not age TTL when serving responses from cache. The entry will still be removed from cache when the TTL expires as normal, but until it expires responses will include the original TTL instead of the remaining TTL. This can be useful if CoreDNS is used as an authorita- tive server and you want to serve a consistent TTL to downstream clients. This is NOT recommended when CoreDNS is caching records it is not authoritative for because it could result in downstream clients us- ing stale answers. CAPACITY AND EVICTION If CAPACITY is not specified, the default cache size is 9984 per cache. The minimum allowed cache size is 1024. If CAPACITY is specified, the actual cache size used will be rounded down to the nearest number divisible by 256 (so all shards are equal in size). Eviction is done per shard. In effect, when a shard reaches capacity, items are evicted from that shard. Since shards don't fill up perfectly evenly, evictions will occur before the entire cache reaches full capacity. Each shard capacity is equal to the total cache size / number of shards (256). Eviction is random, not TTL based. Entries with 0 TTL will remain in the cache until randomly evicted when the shard reaches capacity. METRICS If monitoring is enabled (via the prometheus plugin) then the following metrics are exported: * coredns_cache_entries{server, type, zones, view} - Total elements in the cache by cache type. * coredns_cache_hits_total{server, type, zones, view} - Counter of cache hits by cache type. * coredns_cache_misses_total{server, zones, view} - Counter of cache misses. - Deprecated, derive misses from cache hits/requests counters. * coredns_cache_requests_total{server, zones, view} - Counter of cache requests. * coredns_cache_prefetch_total{server, zones, view} - Counter of times the cache has prefetched a cached item. * coredns_cache_drops_total{server, zones, view} - Counter of responses excluded from the cache due to request/response question name mismatch. * coredns_cache_served_stale_total{server, zones, view} - Counter of re- quests served from stale cache entries. * coredns_cache_evictions_total{server, type, zones, view} - Counter of cache evictions. Cache types are either "denial" or "success". Server is the server handling the request, see the prometheus plugin for documentation. EXAMPLES Enable caching for all zones, but cap everything to a TTL of 10 seconds: . { cache 10 whoami } Proxy to Google Public DNS and only cache responses for example.org (or be- low). . { forward . 8.8.8.8:53 cache example.org } Enable caching for example.org, keep a positive cache size of 5000 and a negative cache size of 2500: example.org { cache { success 5000 denial 2500 } } Enable caching for example.org, but do not cache denials in sub.exam- ple.org: example.org { cache { disable denial sub.example.org } } CoreDNS March 2026 COREDNS-CACHE(7)
NAME | DESCRIPTION | SYNTAX | CAPACITY AND EVICTION | METRICS | EXAMPLES
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