How to create route53 zone with predefined NS, or update NS of a registered domain?

Question

I have a domain registered on Route 53. This domain points towards some name servers of an old Route53 route. I'm now building my Terraform script to create a new Route53 zone. Is it possible to set the name servers when creating this? I tried the following, but that didn't work:

resource "aws_route53_record" "dev-ns" {
  zone_id = "${aws_route53_zone.main.zone_id}"
  name    = "dev.example.com"
  type    = "NS"
  ttl     = "30"

  records = [
    "ns1.aws",
    "ns2.aws",
    "ns3.aws",
    "ns4.aws",
  ]
}

I could imagine that this isn't possible, since the NS seem to assigned randomly. If this is indeed the case, is there a Terraform command to change the NS of my registered domain? I found this posting on Github, so I think there isn't any Terraform command for this: https://github.com/terraform-providers/terraform-provider-aws/issues/88

Any alternatives?

Answer 1

In your case you'd be better off importing the existing Route53 zone into your state file so that Terraform can then begin managing it instead of creating a new one that uses the same name servers.

You can import the zone with the following command:

terraform import aws_route53_zone.myzone Z1D633PJN98FT9

Where import aws_route53_zone.myzone refers to the resource name and Z1D633PJN98FT9 to the zone ID.

Answer 2

You can escape dynamic ns records via delegation set https://docs.aws.amazon.com/Route53/latest/DeveloperGuide/route-53-concepts.html#route-53-concepts-reusable-delegation-set

By default, Route 53 assigns a random selection of name servers to each new hosted zone. To make it easier to migrate DNS service to Route 53 for a large number of domains, you can create a reusable delegation set and then associate the reusable delegation set with new hosted zones.

resource "aws_route53_delegation_set" "main" {
  reference_name = "DynDNS"
}

resource "aws_route53_zone" "primary" {
  name              = "hashicorp.com"
  delegation_set_id = "${aws_route53_delegation_set.main.id}"
}

resource "aws_route53_zone" "secondary" {
  name              = "terraform.io"
  delegation_set_id = "${aws_route53_delegation_set.main.id}"
}

Example from https://www.terraform.io/docs/providers/aws/r/route53_delegation_set.html