Problem
I recently had a power fail for several hours. After that, the DNS server of the pi-hole wasn’t working correctly anymore. dig google.com returned status SERVFAIL, but dig @8.8.8.8 google.com worked.
The root cause seemed to be the wrong system time on the pi-hole. I guess DNSSEC does not work without correct settings. The pity was, the pi has no realtime clock and NTP sync is configured to use server names instead of ip addresses per default (both in /etc/systemd/timesyncd.conf and in the pi-hole NTP.SYNC.SERVER).
As my fritzbox can act as NTP server, I configured it and everything worked again.
Feature Request
Please add a hint that DNSSEC will not work without correct system time and in case of a power fail, NTP needs to work without DNS. Add a hint how to configure NTP, especially with routers that can act as NTP server for their local network. Other solution: Add a RT clock to your pi.