Amazon’s web services are so great that they have an entire suite of them. One of the most useful is Amazon Route 53, which acts as a DNS service for your domain name. It can be used to map to an AWS Elastic Load Balancer (ELB), move traffic between different servers within EC2, or even just return static content from S3. If you’re looking into using AWS then Route 53 should definitely be on your list!
The post will help readers understand what Amazon Web Services Route 53 is and how to create it.

What is AWS Route 53?

AWS Route 53 is a highly available and scalable cloud Domain Name System (DNS) web service.  You can use Route 53 to route users to your website [by translating human-readable names into numerical IP addresses], or as a name server for your domain [by storing all of the information that defines your domain in the Route 53 DNS naming system].  In this article, we will discuss how you can use AWS Route 53 with Elastic Load Balancing to improve your application’s availability and reduce user latency.

AWS Route 53, the advanced DNS web service offered by Amazon Web Services, empowers users with unparalleled control and flexibility over their domain’s DNS configuration. One of its key features is the ability to manage recordsets seamlessly. With Route 53, configuring DNS records such as A, CNAME, MX, and more becomes a breeze. Whether you need to route traffic to different AWS resources or external endpoints,AWS Route 53’s recordset management simplifies the process, ensuring your domain’s reliability and performance. Whether you’re setting up a simple website or orchestrating complex traffic routing strategies, AWS Route 53’s recordset capabilities make it a robust choice for all your DNS needs.

Please Watch the video and Learn About Amazon Route53

AWS Route 53 primarily performs two distinct actions:

1) AWS acts as a “Domain Name System Server” by assigning unique IP addresses to each domain name based on data stored within its hosted zone files. This allows clients to easily refer to internet resources by name rather than by IPv4 or IPv6 address, which is more difficult for humans to remember.

For example, if your company wishes to host the domain name “www.example.com“, you must first create a hosted zone file that contains an entry for this domain name. AWS Route 53 will then resolve the A-record in this entry, which points to one or more IP addresses where customers can connect to reach your website.

2) When a client attempts to connect using the public DNS servers provided by Amazon Web Services (AWS), it becomes aware of all hosted zones being served out of Route 53’s servers, allowing them to maintain records on its own configured list rather than rely on external data sources. Clients utilizing AWS’ DNS service are not required to have any prior knowledge about what services are running within the backend network, they simply use the public DNS servers provided by AWS.

AWS Route 53 supports several different types of resource record sets:

A – This type of resource record set is used when you want to map a unique hostname (e.g., example.com ) or alias (e.g., www.example.com ) to a single IPv4 address or the private IP addresses associated with an Elastic IP Address or Auto Scaling group.

CNAME – This type of resource record set is used when you want to map multiple hostnames (e.g., www1, www2, www3…) to a single DNS entry (e.g., example.com ).

MX – This is a resource record set. It can help you set up an email with Route 53. If someone else manages your email, then use this to make sure that it is up-to-date.

TXT – This type of resource record set is used when you want Route 53 to store arbitrary text data (up to 156 bytes) in a DNS “TXT” record.  For example, this can be helpful if you need to provide information about an endpoint that isn’t supported by existing types of records.

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There are many benefits to using Amazon’s Route 53 service.

Some of the advantages of using this service include:

  • Ability to set up your DNS, or use other alternatives like Google’s Public DNS.
  •  This allows you to create routes between your web servers and end-user requests.
  •  Provides health check monitoring for better availability.

Before we get started, let’s go over some basic terminology:

  1. Name Servers – Name servers are DNS names (e.g., example.com ) or aliases (e.g., www.example.com ) that you want to associate with your domain name or alias (e.g., example.com ).  You can make up to 100 name servers for a given hosted zone (don’t worry, we will show you how to update this later).
  2. Resource Record – A DNS entry (e.g., example.com, www.example.com ) and value (e.g., 192.0.2.1 ) that you want to associate with a name server in a hosted zone.  In AWS Route 53, these are also known as recordsets.
  3. Record Set – In Route 53, recordsets can be either individual resource records or groups of resource records that define a particular DNS name or alias.
  4. Zones – A collection of one or more hosted zones in your AWS account that shares the same namespace.  For example, if you have separate websites for www1 and www2, then they would be stored in separate hosted zones in your AWS account.

What is a DNS name or alias?

In Route 53, a DNS name is the human-readable record that you want to associate with an endpoint (e.g., example.com ).  For example, if someone types myblog.com into their web browser address bar, then Route 53 will provide them with the corresponding IP address associated with that domain name.

In contrast, when you type in a website’s URL into your web browser’s address bar (e.g., www.example.com ), Route 53 translates this human-friendly hostname or alias into its corresponding numerical IP address.

So let’s get started!

Route 53 1

  • On the left-hand side click on “Registered Domains”.

Route 53 2

  • Here a domain name is already registered as shown below.

Route 53 3

  • For registering a new domain just click on Register Domain.

Route 53 4

  • After that, it will ask you to choose a domain name of your choice.
  • Here we are searching a domain name as “whateveryouwantasadomain” and select  “.click-$5.00” because $5.00 is the lowest price to purchase a domain name.
  • If it is available it will show as “Available” and for purchasing it click on Add to cart scroll down and click on Continue.

Route 53 5

  • After that, it will ask for Personal information just enter all the details and click on Continue.
  • Review all your details and click on Complete Purchase.
  • The complete process will take an hour to register the domain name and it will also ask for verification of the email address. Verify it.
  • Now you will see that the domain name is registered and you will see the expiration date.

Route 53 6

  • A Hosted Zone is also created for you
  • In the left-hand side click on Hosted Zone which is shown in below figure

Route 53 7

Congratulations! You have successfully created Route 53.

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Conclusion:

We’ve given you a brief overview of what AWS Route 53 is and how it can be used to create highly available and scalable web services. If you want more information, check out our blog or take one of our training courses on the subject.