AWS - Route53 - Hosted Zones and Sub domains

Question

We are migrating to AWS, and so far we are quite pleased with the performance and ease of use the AWS console provides, especially the Route53 UX. However we ran into an issue.

We have 3 subnets (datacenters), and our old DNS provider we had it set-up like this:

example.us

    www

sn1.example.us (local datacenter)

    gateway (CNAME)
    demo1
    feature1

sn2.example.us (old datacenter)

    gateway (A record for static ip)
    app-a-1
    service-a-1

sn3.example.us (aws vpc)

    gateway (A record for elastic ip)
    app-a-1
    service-a-1

So when we migrated to Route53, I maintained the same structure, in that I created a separate "hosted zone" for each subdomain, as it makes each zone easier to administer.

The problem I am seeing is that gateway.sn1 and gateway.sn3 are not resolving, however gateway.sn2 is resolving. With respect to Route53, is it ok to maintain this structure, or should I just have one hosted zone for example.us, and put everything in there?

Update #1

When I created each separate zone, they each were defaulted to differing nameserver records, so I went in and updated all the other zones NS records to match sn2.example.us (as it was the only one working).

Update #2

Bad idea trying to share nameservers across the various hosted zones, when testing behavior, I was getting REFUSED responses. So it does look like I have to move all entries from subdomains (in other hosted zones) up into the parent zone, so I can use the parent's zone nameservers when updating registrar's nameserver information for the domain example.us

Michael - sqlbot Michael - sqlbot · Accepted Answer · 2015-09-10T21:46:49

You can definitely do this in Route 53... just not the specific way you tried to do it.

Create 4 hosted zones, example.com, sn1.example.com, sn2.example.com, and sn3.example.com.

Don't change the NS entries. You can't. (You technically can, but it doesn't work, if you try.)

Give the assigned nameservers for example.com to the registrar.

Then, in the example.com hosted zone, create one NS entry with hostname sn1, and paste the 4 automatically assigned nameservers for sn1 (as assigned by Route 53 to the hosted zone for sn1.example.com) in the box. Repeat the process for sn2 and sn3 using the correct NS records originally assigned by Route 53 in each case.

The way you tried to implement this can't work, because changing the NS in a hosted zone doesn't change which actual Route 53 servers will respond to requests. That can't be changed.

AWS - Route53 - Hosted Zones and Sub domains

Update #1

Update #2

1 Answers