Amazon AWS

What is Amazon AWS Route 53

Welcome readers, in this tutorial, we will understand AWS Route 53 and its related terminology. But beware it might be a monotonous article without any picture or demo but it is still an interesting read to know the basics of AWS Route 53.

1. Introduction to AWS Route 53

Amazon Route 53 represents the highly available and scalable Domain naming service (DNS) used for registering the domains for the websites, routing, and health checks. Its key features are –

  • Domain registration
  • Records
  • Hosted Zone
  • Routing policies
  • Health checks and monitoring
  • Traffic flow

1.1 Important Route 53 Concepts

Let us understand the important ones in detail.

1.1.1 Domain registration

Domain registration consists of a domain name, domain registrar, domain registry, domain reseller, and the top level. In here,

  • We buy a domain name and then register it with the AWS Route 53. The Router 53 will then automatically make the DNS service for the domain by:
    • Creating a hosted zone as the same name as your domain
    • Assigning a set of four servers to the created hosted zone for browsing purpose
    • Getting the name servers from the hosted zone and adding them to the domain
  • Also supports the transferring of domain registration to Route53 if it is registered with some another registrar
  • In domain registration, DNS Domain name format

1.1.2 Records

  • They define the path where we want to route the traffic for each domain name
  • They are created in the hosted zone and every record name must end with the name of the hosted zone
  • Supports the following type of DNS record types:
    Record typeDescription
    A Record typeIs an IPv4 address in dotted-decimal notation
    AAAA Record typeIs an IPv6 address in a colon-separated hexadecimal format
    CAA Record typeSpecify the certificate authority which is used to allow certificate for a domain or a subdomain
    CNAME Record typeSame format as the domain name
    MX Record typeEach value contains two values (i.e. priority and domain name)
    NS Record typeIdentifies the naming servers for the hosted zone
    PTR Record typeSame domain name
    SOA Record typeProvides information about the domain and corresponding Route53 hosted zone
    SPF Record typeStands for Sender policy framework
    SRV Record typeStands for Service locator
    MX Record typeStands for Mail exchange record

1.1.3 Hosted Zone

  • A hosted zone is a place where Route53 automatically creates the Name Server (popularly known as NS) and the Start of Authority (popularly known as SOA) records for the hosted zones
  • Route3 creates a set of 4 unique name servers with each hosted zone
  • There are two types of hosted zones –
    • The public hosted zone that routes internet traffic to the resources
    • The private hosted zone that routes traffic within the AWS VPC. Always remember when a record is created in the private hosted zone following routing policies can be used – Simple, Failover, Multivalue answer, and Weighted

1.1.4 Routing Policies

Route53 supports the following routing policies that are used in a hosted zone –

Routing policyDescription
SimpleThis policy maps the domain name to (one or more) ip addresses
WeightedMaps a single DNS to multiple weighted resources i.e. 10% to Resource A, 30% to Resource B and so on
LatencyOffers the option of minimum latency for routing the traffic
FailoverActive passive failover approach
GeoproximityChooses the nearest resource (geographic distance) for the user
NS Record typeIdentifies the naming servers for the hosted zone
Multivalue answerReturn multiple healthy records at random and we have the option to configure a health check against every record
GeolocationSelect on the basis of user location

1.1.5 Monitoring

  • Route53 dashboard provides detailed information about the status of the domains:
    • Status of new domain registrations
    • Status of the existing domain registrations transferred to Amazon Route53
    • Details of the domain(s) that are going to expire
  • Use of Amazon CloudWatch metric to see the number of DNS queries served for each Route53 hosted zone
  • Monitoring the resources by creating Route53 health checks which are then consumed by CloudWatch service to prepare real-time metric data
  • Use of CloudTrail to log the API calls

2. Pricing

  • The hosted zone is charged at the time of creation and on the first day of each subsequent month. However, if a hosted zone is deleted within 12 hours of creation no money is charged
  • Traffic flow policy record per month
  • Pricing for domain name varies by Top-level domain registrar

3. Summary

In this section, we learned the following:

  • Introduction to Route53
  • Rout53 characteristics such as Hosted Zone, Routing policies, Monitoring, etc.
  • The Pricing of the AWS route 53

That is all for this tutorial! I hope the article served you whatever you were looking for.

If you want to learn more about AWS, check our articles here. Happy Learning and do not forget to share!

Yatin

An experience full-stack engineer well versed with Core Java, Spring/Springboot, MVC, Security, AOP, Frontend (Angular & React), and cloud technologies (such as AWS, GCP, Jenkins, Docker, K8).
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