AWS Route 53

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Global service, globally resilient.

  1. Register Domains
  2. Host Zones (managed nameservers)

Zone files are stored in AWS. Zone files are stored on four AWS NS servers.

  • Can be public
  • Or private linked VPC(s)
  • Records called record set
    R53 - Registrar only is not good. R53 Registry + “Hosting” or R53 “Hosting” is Good

Route 53 Routing

Related: Routing

Simple Routing

Randomly selects one record value and routes to it

Failover Routing

Includes health check on primary record, if records fails.
Useful for Active-Passive (Active-Backup) failover

Multi Value Routing

As failover but you can have many values to be returned
Returns up to 8 health records, at random 8+
Improves availability. If you have many resources servicing your app.

Weighted Routing

Records are returned based on their defined weight.
More weight, more often returned. Record weight vs total weight
Can be combined with health checks, to exclude unhealthy records until healthy found.
Useful for testing new versions, control records distribution

Latency Routing

AWS manages a database of between users general location and regions tagged in records.
Returns record which offers the lowest estimated latency and healthy.
Up to 1 record with the same name in each AWS region.
Good if latency is a concern

Geolocation Routing

Does not return records by latency (logically closest), but returns them based on record’s location (from narrow to broad): state, country, continent or default (optional). Then compared to users IP.
Offers records exactly based on the location of the customer.

Geoproximity Routing

Returns closest records. Records tagged with AWS regions or latitude and longitude coordinates. Bias can be provided, to expand region we are searching from.

Route 53 Health Checks

Configured separately but used with records.
You can check anything on the web.
TCP, HTTP(S), HTTP(S) String matching
Health checks are done every 30s (10s for extra costs)
Healthy/Unhealthy

Three types:

  • Endpoint checks
  • CloudWatch alarm checks
  • Calculated checks (check consisting of other checks)

Route 53 Split-View Hosted Zone

One public zone and one private zone with the same name are created. This way, public internet and private network can access different resources under one zone name.

Records are created in zones according to their publicity level, i.e. in our example:

  • A – record is private record
  • TXT, MX, www – are public records.
    So in our example, private can access anything (assuming they have access to internet) but public internet hosts can’t resolve private records

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