2.4.2. Amazon Route 53
š” First Principle: Amazon Route 53 provides a highly available and scalable cloud Domain Name System (DNS) web service, translating human-readable domain names into IP addresses for application access.
Amazon Route 53 is a highly available and scalable cloud Domain Name System (DNS) web service. It's how users connect to websites and applications using human-readable names (like example.com) instead of IP addresses.
Key Characteristics of Amazon Route 53:
- Domain Name Registration: You can register new domain names directly through Route 53.
- DNS Service: It routes user requests to internet applications hosted on AWS or on-premises. It translates domain names (e.g.,
www.example.com) into numerical IP addresses (e.g.,192.0.2.1). - Highly Available & Scalable: Designed for extreme reliability and automatic scaling to handle large query volumes.
- Health Checks: Can perform health checks on your resources and automatically reroute traffic away from unhealthy endpoints (DNS failover).
- Routing Policies: Supports various routing policies to direct traffic, such as:
- Simple Routing: Basic routing to a single resource.
- Weighted Routing: Distribute traffic based on specified weights.
- Latency-based Routing: Routes users to the AWS Region that provides the lowest latency.
- Geolocation Routing: Routes users based on their geographic location.
Scenario: A company launches a new website and needs to connect its custom domain name (e.g., mycompany.com) to its web application hosted on AWS. They also want to ensure that if their primary web server becomes unhealthy, traffic is automatically redirected to a healthy backup.
Reflection Question: How does Amazon Route 53, by providing a highly available and scalable DNS service with health checks and routing policies, fundamentally translate domain names to IP addresses and ensure continuous application access for users?