How can we make DNS entries using Route53 to a domain hosted with an external (third party) domain provider

3
votes

We have purchased a domain lets say "xyz.com" from a third party domain provider. We have our resources in two AWS regions and we want to implement failover between the two regions using Route53.

We have created a hosted zone with the same name as of our domain i.e. "xyz.com" and created record sets in the hosted zone with failover as the routing policy.

But as our domain is external the record sets are not getting reflected.

Please suggest a way to achieve failover using route53 with domain hosted with an external provider without moving the DNS to Route53.

3
amazon-web-servicesdnsamazon-route53

3 Answers

1
votes

You won't be able to do this without switching to Route53 to host your domain. Route53 must be able to control the responses to queries according to the records you have configured. You'll have to delegate your domain to Route53 by setting the NS records to the values provided in the Route53 console.

1
votes

If you don't change your DNS Nameservers to Route53 then that zone will have no effect.

You could however register a subdomain in Route53, e.g. myapp.xzy.com, and delegate that subdomain/zone in your third party domain provider to Route53. You may also add a CNAME in the main domain pointing to a record in the subdomain.

To Summarise:

  1. Create a Hosted Zone in Route53 for myapp.xyz.com
  2. In that zone add the two DNS records with a failover policy

  3. In the root domain DNS, add the AWS provided NS Records to delegate a subdomain. e.g.:

    myapp     NS    ns-123.awsdns-09.net.

  4. If you created Apex A Records/Alias in step 2, use myapp.xyz.com

  5. If you created CNAMEs in step 2, use mycname.myapp.xyz.com; or shorten by adding a CNAME in the root domain to resolve to that address.

Hope this makes sense.

1
votes

You need to point the name servers for your domain to AWS name servers. Basically, below are the steps -

  1. Login to the website from where you have bought the domain.
  2. Go to the domain DNS settings for your domain on the website.
  3. Name Server records NS records must be pointed to the website name servers, change them to the name servers you have from AWS route53.
  4. Wait for at least 24 hours to reflect this change.