Route 53 Hosted Zones#

So far in this course, every time we’ve needed to communicate with an AWS resource we set up, we’ve identified it in one of two ways:

  • A raw IPv4 address, like we used to load the web app, or to SSH into EC2 instances.
  • An AWS-provided domain name, like patientping-db.random_id.us-east-1.rds.amazonaws.com for an RDS instance.

But usually for a real company, we need to bring our own domain name and point it to AWS resources.

The solution to this problem is Route 53, AWS’ DNS service. Route 53 translates names like patientping.io into IP addresses. It can answer questions such as:

  • Where should emails to cto@patientping.io be routed?
  • Which server runs the website www.patientping.io?
  • Is this recruiting email really from jobs@patientping.io?

In college, my friends used to send each other emails “from” their professor’s email address, saying “Please come to my office first thing in the morning…” Which is why domain verification is so important!

To point a domain to your servers, you need somewhere to define and store DNS records. That’s what a hosted zone is: a “box” for all the DNS records for a domain.

Normally you’d buy a “real” domain from a registrar (a company that sells domain names, e.g., Porkbun, Namecheap, and yes, AWS). For this course, we’ll use a free patientping.internal domain, which works for learning but won’t resolve on the public internet.

Assignment#

PatientPing wants internal hostnames like www.patientping.internal and blog.patientping.internal to resolve inside the VPC (for the app, for docs, for whatever Product thinks of next). A private hosted zone does exactly that: DNS that only works from your VPC, no need to buy a real domain.

Create a Route 53 private hosted zone for patientping.internal and associate it with your patientping VPC.

Cost check: Hosted zones cost $0.50 per zone per month, but the first 25 hosted zones are free for the first 12 months.

  1. Navigate to “Route 53” → “Hosted zones” in the AWS Console.
  2. Click “Create hosted zone.”
  3. Configure the zone:
    • Domain name: patientping.internal
    • Type: Private hosted zone
    • Associated VPC: region us-east-1; select patientping VPC
  4. Click “Create hosted zone” to confirm.
  5. Take a moment to review the initial records that were added to this hosted zone.

You should see SOA and NS records. The NS records specify name servers (e.g. ns-0.awsdns-00.com), which will answer DNS queries for patientping.internal from within the VPC.

Tip#

To create a private hosted zone via the AWS CLI, you can use the following command structure:

aws route53 create-hosted-zone \
--name patientping.internal \
--caller-reference ANY-UNIQUE-STRING \
--hosted-zone-config PrivateZone=true \
--vpc VPCRegion=us-east-1,VPCId=YOUR-VPC-ID
Backward dns aws-a-records Forward