Route 53 Flashcards
Route 53 is highly available, fully managed and Authoritative DNS - what does Authoritative mean here?
The customer can update the DNS records
What is Route 53 in the scope of DNS?
A Domain Registrar - allows the creation of domain names that are translated to IP addresses.
What type of information does each Route 53 record contain?
The information that allows you to route traffic for a domain
What specific information does each Route 53 record contain?
- Domain/subdomain Name (e.g., example.com)
- Record Type (e.g., A or AAAA)
- Value (e.g., 12.34.56.78)
- Routing Policy (how Route 53 responds to queries)
- TTL (the amount of time the record is cached at DNS Resolvers)
What record types does Route 53 support?
Must know - A, AAAA, CNAME, NS
Advanced - CAA, DS, MX, NAPTR, PTR, SOA, TXT, SPF, SRV
What is the purpose of record type A?
Maps a hostname to IPv4
What is the purpose of record type AAAA?
Maps a hostname to IPv6
What is the purpose of record type CNAME?
Maps a hostname to another hostname, where the target is a domain name that has an A or AAAA record
Give an example of where you would not be able to create a CNAME record
Can’t create a CNAME record for the top node of a DNS namespace (Zone Apex) - e.g., can’t create for example.com, but you can for www.example.com
What is the purpose of record type NS?
Name Servers for the Hosted Zone - these control how traffic is routed for a domain
What is a hosted zone?
A container for records that define how to route traffic to a domain and its subdomains
What is a public hosted zone?
Contains records that specify how to route traffic on the Internet (public domain names)
What is a private hosted zone?
Contain records that specify how you route traffic within one or more VPCs (private domain names)
How much does a hosted zone cost per month with AWS?
$0.50
TTL is mandatory for all DNS records except…
Alias records
Describe the basic DNS flow
- Web browser wants to access example.com
- Local DNS server queries the Root DNS server for the .com NS
- Local DNS server then queries the Top Level Domain (TLD) DNS server for the example.com NS
- Local DNS server then queries the Sub Level Domain (SLD) DNS server for the example.com IP address
What are the trade-offs of different record TTLs? Give a strategy for handling a record change.
High TTL (e.g., 24hr)
- Less traffic on Route 53
- Possibly outdated records
Low TTL (e.g. 60sec)
- More traffic on Route 53 so more expensive
- Records are outdated for less time
- Easy to change records
When wanting to change records, can decrease TTL then change the records so that Clients quickly pick up the change. After a certain amount of time, increase the TTL again (if you know the record will not be changing again soon)
What does the Record TTL do?
Tells the client how long to cache the DNS record (i.e., the resolved IP address)
State the difference between CNAME and Alias
CNAME:
- Points a hostname to any other hostname
- Only for non-root domain (e.g., application.example.com but not example.com)
Alias:
- Points a hostname to an AWS resource
- Works for root domain and non root domain
- Free
- Native health check
What type of record is an Alias?
A or AAAA for AWS records
Give a limitation of Alias records
You can’t set the TTL
What routing policies does Route 53 support?
Simple, Weighted, Failover, Latency based, Geolocation, Multi-Value Answer, Geoproxitimity (using Route 53 Traffic Flow Feature)
What is the difference between Route 53 routing and Load balancer routing?
Route 53 routing involves routing DNS queries (translating hostnames into endpoints).
Load balancer involves routing a request to an application on an instance.