If I run into an issue and want to redirect traffic from the XDN to my origin, should I just update DNS to point directly to my origin and away from the XDN?
The problem with changing traffic using DNS is that there is always the possibility that DNS servers are caching for longer than the specified TTL or locally cached on users machines. It is a “jarring” change and the reason things like traffic shaping and load balancers exist. DNS can be a viable option if the host a record is pointing to becomes totally unavailable, but in a case where you need to make the switch due to something further downstream it is a very intrusive way to make the change.
The better option is to use the traffic shaping built into the XDN, where you can send all or some traffic to origin in a way that doesn’t rely on changes to external systems. The change will be more instantaneous than a DNS based switch and have less potential side effects.