CNAME performance hits, named statistics recording

[Forrest Aldrich]

What performance hits, if any, are there to utilizing CNAME records on big 
production machines.  In particular, would this eventually be reflected in 
evaluation figures provided by third parties, like Inverse.

I'm looking for some tools that might emulate the tests Inverse performs, 
so that we can do our own verification and periodic health checks.

Finally, are there other tools that will grab the named statistics info 
periodically and, perhaps, dump it into a database and create graphs or 
other reports (a la MRTG, etc)?


Thanks.