Amazon Route 53 | Getting Started Flashcards
What is a Domain Name System (DNS) Service?
Getting Started
Amazon Route 53 | Networking & Content Delivery
DNS is a globally distributed service that translates human readable names like www.example.com into the numeric IP addresses like 192.0.2.1 that computers use to connect to each other. The Internet’s DNS system works much like a phone book by managing the mapping between names and numbers. For DNS, the names are domain names (www.example.com) that are easy for people to remember and the numbers are IP addresses (192.0.2.1) that specify the location of computers on the Internet. DNS servers translate requests for names into IP addresses, controlling which server an end user will reach when they type a domain name into their web browser. These requests are called “queries.”
What is Amazon Route 53?
Getting Started
Amazon Route 53 | Networking & Content Delivery
Amazon Route 53 provides highly available and scalable Domain Name System (DNS), domain name registration, and health-checking web services. It is designed to give developers and businesses an extremely reliable and cost effective way to route end users to Internet applications by translating names like example.com into the numeric IP addresses, such as 192.0.2.1, that computers use to connect to each other. You can combine your DNS with health-checking services to route traffic to healthy endpoints or to independently monitor and/or alarm on endpoints. You can also purchase and manage domain names such as example.com and automatically configure DNS settings for your domains. Route 53 effectively connects user requests to infrastructure running in AWS – such as Amazon EC2 instances, Elastic Load Balancing load balancers, or Amazon S3 buckets – and can also be used to route users to infrastructure outside of AWS.
What can I do with Amazon Route 53?
Getting Started
Amazon Route 53 | Networking & Content Delivery
With Amazon Route 53, you can create and manage your public DNS records. Like a phone book, Route 53 lets you manage the IP addresses listed for your domain names in the Internet’s DNS phone book. Route 53 also answers requests to translate specific domain names like into their corresponding IP addresses like 192.0.2.1. You can use Route 53 to create DNS records for a new domain or transfer DNS records for an existing domain. The simple, standards-based REST API for Route 53 allows you to easily create, update and manage DNS records. Route 53 additionally offers health checks to monitor the health and performance of your application as well as your web servers and other resources. You can also register new domain names or transfer in existing domain names to be managed by Route 53.
How do I get started with Amazon Route 53?
Getting Started
Amazon Route 53 | Networking & Content Delivery
Amazon Route 53 has a simple web service interface that lets you get started in minutes. Your DNS records are organized into “hosted zones” that you configure with the AWS Management Console or Route 53’s API. To use Route 53, you simply:
Subscribe to the service by clicking on the sign-up button on the service page.
If you already have a domain name:
Use the AWS Management Console or the CreateHostedZone API to create a hosted zone that can store DNS records for your domain. Upon creating the hosted zone, you receive four Route 53 name servers across four different Top-Level Domains (TLDs) to help ensure a high level of availability.
Additionally, you can transfer your domain name to Route 53’s management via either the AWS Management Console or the API.
If you don’t already have a domain name:
Use the AWS Management Console or the API to register your new domain name.
Route 53 automatically creates a hosted zone that stores DNS records for your domain. You also receive four Route 53 name servers across four different Top-Level Domains (TLDs) to help ensure a high level of availability.
Your hosted zone will be initially populated with a basic set of DNS records, including four virtual name servers that will answer queries for your domain. You can add, delete or change records in this set by using the AWS Management Console or by calling the ChangeResourceRecordSet API . A list of supported DNS records is available here.
If your domain name is not managed by Route 53, you will need to inform the registrar with whom you registered your domain name to update the name servers for your domain to the ones associated with your hosted zone. If your domain name is managed by Route 53 already, your domain name will be automatically associated with the name servers hosting your zone.
How does Amazon Route 53 provide high availability and low latency?
Getting Started
Amazon Route 53 | Networking & Content Delivery
Route 53 is built using AWS’s highly available and reliable infrastructure. The globally distributed nature of our DNS servers helps ensure a consistent ability to route your end users to your application by circumventing any internet or network related issues. Route 53 is designed to provide the level of dependability required by important applications. Using a global anycast network of DNS servers around the world, Route 53 is designed to automatically answer queries from the optimal location depending on network conditions. As a result, the service offers low query latency for your end users.
What are the DNS server names for the Amazon Route 53 service?
Getting Started
Amazon Route 53 | Networking & Content Delivery
To provide you with a highly available service, each Amazon Route 53 hosted zone is served by its own set of virtual DNS servers. The DNS server names for each hosted zone are thus assigned by the system when that hosted zone is created.
What is the difference between a Domain and a Hosted Zone?
Getting Started
Amazon Route 53 | Networking & Content Delivery
A domain is a general DNS concept. Domain names are easily recognizable names for numerically addressed Internet resources. For example, amazon.com is a domain. A hosted zone is an Amazon Route 53 concept. A hosted zone is analogous to a traditional DNS zone file; it represents a collection of records that can be managed together, belonging to a single parent domain name. All resource record sets within a hosted zone must have the hosted zone’s domain name as a suffix. For example, the amazon.com hosted zone may contain records named www.amazon.com, and www.aws.amazon.com, but not a record named www.amazon.ca. You can use the Route 53 Management Console or API to create, inspect, modify, and delete hosted zones. You can also use the Management Console or API to register new domain names and transfer in existing domain names into Route 53’s management.
What is the price of Amazon Route 53?
Getting Started
Amazon Route 53 | Networking & Content Delivery
Amazon Route 53 charges are based on actual usage of the service for Hosted Zones, Queries, Health Checks, and Domain Names. For full details, see the Amazon Route 53 pricing page.
You pay only for what you use. There are no minimum fees, no minimum usage commitments, and no overage charges. You can estimate your monthly bill using the AWS Simple Monthly Calculator.
What types of access controls can I set for the management of my Domains on Amazon Route 53?
Getting Started
Amazon Route 53 | Networking & Content Delivery
You can control management access to your Amazon Route 53 hosted zone by using the AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) service. AWS IAM allows you to control who in your organization can make changes to your DNS records by creating multiple users and managing the permissions for each of these users within your AWS Account. Learn more about AWS IAM here.
I have subscribed for Amazon Route 53 but when I try to use the service it says “The AWS Access Key ID needs a subscription for the service”
Getting Started
Amazon Route 53 | Networking & Content Delivery
When you sign up for a new AWS service, it can take up to 24 hours in some cases to complete activation, during which time you cannot sign up for the service again. If you’ve been waiting longer than 24 hours without receiving an email confirming activation, this could indicate a problem with your account or the authorization of your payment details. Please contact AWS Customer Service for help.
Does Amazon Route 53 offer a Service Level Agreement (SLA)?
Getting Started
Amazon Route 53 | Networking & Content Delivery
Yes. The Amazon Route 53 SLA provides for a service credit if a customer’s monthly uptime percentage is below our service commitment in any billing cycle. More information can be found here.
When is my hosted zone charged?
Getting Started
Amazon Route 53 | Networking & Content Delivery
Hosted zones are billed once when they are created and then on the first day of each month.
Why do I see two charges for the same hosted zone in the same month?
Getting Started
Amazon Route 53 | Networking & Content Delivery
Hosted zones have a grace period of 12 hours–if you delete a hosted zone within 12 hours after you create it, we don’t charge you for the hosted zone. After the grace period ends, we immediately charge the standard monthly fee for a hosted zone. If you create a hosted zone on the last day of the month (for example, January 31st), the charge for January might appear on the February invoice, along with the charge for February.
