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Route 53


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Amazon Route 53 is a highly available and scalable Domain Name System (DNS) web service.

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Key Concepts​

  • Hosted Zone: a container for DNS records for a specific domain; can be public (internet) or private (VPC)
  • Record Set: a DNS record within a hosted zone that defines how traffic is routed for a domain or subdomain
  • Alias Record: a Route 53-specific extension to DNS that maps a domain to an AWS resource (e.g. ELB, CloudFront, S3); no charge for alias queries to AWS resources
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Record Types​

  • A: maps a domain to an IPv4 address
  • AAAA: maps a domain to an IPv6 address
  • CNAME: maps a domain to another domain name; cannot be used at the zone apex (e.g. example.com)
  • MX: specifies mail servers for the domain
  • TXT: stores text information (e.g. SPF, domain verification)
  • NS: identifies the name servers for the hosted zone
  • SOA: provides information about the hosted zone
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Routing Policies​

  • Simple: routes traffic to a single resource; if multiple values are specified, Route 53 returns all values in random order
  • Weighted: routes traffic to multiple resources based on assigned weights (e.g. 70% to one server, 30% to another)
  • Latency-based: routes traffic to the resource with the lowest network latency for the user
  • Failover: routes traffic to a primary resource and fails over to a secondary resource if health checks fail
  • Geolocation: routes traffic based on the geographic location of the user
  • Geoproximity: routes traffic based on the geographic location of the resources and optionally shifts traffic using a bias
  • Multivalue Answer: returns multiple healthy records in response to DNS queries (up to 8); acts as a basic load balancer
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Health Checks​

  • Monitor the health and performance of endpoints (web servers, other resources)
  • Types: HTTP, HTTPS, TCP
  • Can monitor an endpoint, other health checks (calculated), or a CloudWatch alarm
  • Unhealthy endpoints are removed from DNS responses
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Domain Registration​

  • Route 53 can be used to register domain names
  • Automatically creates a hosted zone for the registered domain
  • Supports automatic renewal
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