Setting up a DNS Hosted Zone in Amazon Route 53

Title: Setting up a DNS Hosted Zone in Amazon Route 53

In this task, I am setting up a hosted zone in Amazon Web Services using Amazon Route 53. This helps in managing DNS records for a domain.

What is a hosted zone

A hosted zone is a container for DNS records. It stores information about how domain names are mapped to IP addresses.

There are two types
Public hosted zone for internet access
Private hosted zone for internal use inside a VPC

Here I am creating a public hosted zone.

Step 1: Login to AWS

First, I logged into the AWS Management Console.

Then I searched for Route 53 in the services section.

Step 2: Open Hosted Zones

Inside Route 53, I selected Hosted Zones.

Then I clicked on Create Hosted Zone.

Step 3: Enter domain details

I entered my domain name like example.com.

Then I selected Public Hosted Zone.

After that, I clicked Create Hosted Zone.

Step 4: Hosted zone created

Now AWS created the hosted zone.

Inside it, I can see default records like

NS record
SOA record

These are automatically created by AWS.

NS record contains name servers provided by AWS.
SOA record contains domain authority details.

Step 5: Add DNS record

Now I added a new record.

I clicked Create Record.

Then I entered

Record name like www
Record type as A
Value as IP address of my server

Then I saved the record.

Step 6: Update name servers

To make this work, I copied the NS records from Route 53.

Then I went to my domain registrar and replaced the existing name servers with these AWS name servers.

This step connects my domain to Route 53.

Step 7: Testing

After some time, I tested the domain in browser.

Now the domain is resolving to the IP address I configured.

What I understood

Route 53 helps in mapping domain names to IP addresses.

Hosted zone is where all DNS records are stored.

NS records are important to connect domain with AWS.

Conclusion

Setting up a hosted zone in Route 53 is simple and important for managing DNS. It allows us to control how users reach our application using domain names instead of IP addresses.