📋 Route 53 & Hybrid DNS Cheat Sheet

Quick-reference for Route 53 routing policies, health checks, DNSSEC, resolver endpoints, and hybrid DNS architectures.

Routing Policies

  • Simple: single value, no health check
  • Weighted: distribute traffic by weight (0–255)
  • Latency: route to lowest-latency region
  • Failover: primary/secondary with health checks
  • Geolocation: route by continent/country/state
  • Geoproximity: route by geographic distance with bias
  • Multivalue answer: up to 8 healthy records (not a load balancer substitute)

Health Checks

  • Endpoint: HTTP/HTTPS/TCP to IP or domain (10 or 30 sec interval)
  • Calculated: combine child health checks (AND/OR logic)
  • CloudWatch alarm: monitor metrics-based health
  • Threshold: configurable failure count (default 3/10 checkers)

Hybrid DNS (Resolver)

  • Inbound endpoint: on-prem resolves AWS private zones → ENIs in VPC
  • Outbound endpoint: AWS resolves on-prem domains → forwards to on-prem DNS
  • Forwarding rules: conditional forwarding by domain name
  • Share rules via RAM across accounts in Organization

DNSSEC

  • Signing: Route 53 signs hosted zone with KSK + ZSK
  • Chain of trust: DS record in parent zone validates child
  • Key management: CMK in KMS for KSK, Route 53 manages ZSK
  • Enable per hosted zone — cannot partial-enable

Practice Route 53 Questions

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