Amazon Route 53

A DNS service that links domain names to AWS resources.

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In one sentence

A DNS service that links domain names to AWS resources.

Overview

AWS DNS service. Used to point domain names to AWS resources such as CloudFront, ALB, and S3.

Common use cases

Pointing a custom domain to CloudFront
DNS record management
Health checks and DNS failover

CLF-C02 exam points

A DNS service
Alias records can point to AWS resources
Multiple routing policies are available

SAA-C03 exam points

Use latency-based or failover routing policies as appropriate
Used for custom domain integration with CloudFront
Hosted Zones incur monthly charges

Practical Use

Amazon Route 53 is a highly available and scalable cloud DNS (Domain Name System) service provided by AWS. It delivers domain registration, DNS record hosting (Hosted Zone), health checks, and traffic routing through a single service. Alias records for AWS resources allow name resolution to point to CloudFront distributions, Application Load Balancers, S3 static website hosting, API Gateway, and other AWS services at no additional cost. Major routing policies include simple routing (a single record), weighted routing (distribution based on specified weights), latency-based routing (routing to the region with the lowest latency), failover routing (switching to a secondary when the primary fails), geolocation routing (routing based on the client's geographic location), geoproximity routing, and multi-value answer routing, for a total of seven options. Combined with health checks, automatic DNS failover during outages can be configured. Typical use cases include pointing custom domains to CloudFront distributions or ALBs, DNS-level load distribution across multiple regions, failover configurations for disaster recovery (DR), and operating private DNS (Private Hosted Zones) for internal applications. Pricing is composed of a monthly fixed fee per Hosted Zone, the number of DNS queries, the number of health checks, and domain registration fees (annual, varying by TLD). Queries to AWS resource Alias records are free of charge.

Official Documentation

Cost notes

Billed for Hosted Zones and DNS queries
Treat custom domain adoption as optional in the MVP

Security notes

Restrict permissions to change DNS records
Protect the domain management account with MFA

Related services

Amazon CloudFront

A CDN that delivers web content quickly and securely from locations close to the user.

AWS Certificate Manager

Manages the certificates required for HTTPS.

Elastic Load Balancing

Service that distributes access across multiple servers.

Related architecture diagrams

STATIC / SITE / S3 / CLOUDFRONT