Easiest way to migrate DNS Failover from DynDNS to Route53 for a 3 different domain.

Migrating from DynDNS to Route53 can be an advantage for multiple reasons, such as the lowest fees of $0.5 per domain name and a minor charge for DNS Lookup where DynDNS charges more than $55 USD per year. Additionally with few scripts to execute cron jobs and Lambda to trigger Cloudwatch event, the process of DNS Failover is much simplified in Route53. Even the process is made smoother using a load balancer and auto-scaling group to it. Here is the sequence of continuous steps to migrate DynDNS to Route53 and the process are follows,

Route53 Resolver for DNS Failover between 3 domains.

Step 1: Set up Route53 and create hosted zones

• Sign in to your AWS Management Console and navigate to the Route53 service.
• Create a hosted zone for each of your domains by clicking on “Create Hosted Zone” button.
• Create the necessary resource record sets in your Route53 hosted zone. These record sets will include the IP addresses of your primary and secondary servers, i.e., Enter the domain name for the hosted zone, select “Public Hosted Zone”, and click on “Create”.

Step 2: Import DNS records

• Go to your DynDNS account and export the DNS records for each domain as a zone file.
• Open the exported zone file and remove any lines that are not resource records (RR).
• Save the modified zone file in a text editor.

Step 3: Import DNS records into Route53

• Go to your hosted zone in Route53 and click on “Import Zone File”.
• Copy the modified zone file content into the text area provided and click on “Import”.
• Review the imported records and ensure that everything looks correct.

Step 4: Create a health check

Set up health checks in Route53 for each of your servers. The health checks will monitor the availability of your primary server and will failover to the secondary server if necessary.Click on “Create Health Check” in Route53.

• Enter the IP address or URL of the primary server in the “IP address or domain name” field.
• Configure the other settings as necessary and click on “Next”.
  Select the protocol and port that you want to use for the health check and click on “Next”.
• Review the settings and click on “Create Health Check”.

Step 5: Set up DNS failover

Update the DNS settings for your domain with your domain registrar. Change the name servers for your domain to the name servers provided by Route53.

• Click on “Create Record Set” in your hosted zone.
• Enter the name of the record set and select the record type as “Failover”.
• Select the health check that you created in Step 4 as the primary health check.
• Enter the IP address or URL of the secondary server in the “Value” field and select “Secondary” for “Failover Record Type”.
• Set the “Failover TTL” as necessary and click on “Create Record Set”.

Step 6: Repeat Step 5 for other domains

It may take some time for DNS changes to propagate. Be patient and wait for the changes to take effect and test your failover by intentionally taking down your primary server. Route53 should detect the failure and failover to your secondary server.
Repeat Step 5 for each of your domains that you want to set up DNS failover for. Finally, monitor your failover setup regularly to ensure that it continues to function properly.

You have now successfully migrated DNS failover from DynDNS to Route53 for your domains.

A Realtime Scenario:
Suppose you have three domains: alpha.com, bigbuddy.net, and terracode.org. Here’s an example of how you can set up DNS failover for each of these domains in Route53:

- Set up Route53 and create hosted zones for each domain.
- Export DNS records for each domain from DynDNS and save them as zone files.
- Import the zone files into Route53 for each domain.
- Create a health check for the primary server for each domain.
- Set up DNS failover for each domain:
- For example.com, create a record set with the name “alpha.com” and select “Failover” as the record type. Select the primary health check that you created and enter the IP address of the secondary server in the “Value” field. Set the “Failover TTL” as necessary.
- Repeat the above step for bigbuddy.net and terracode.org.

If you want to connect with an AWS IQ Expert for implementing the DNS Failover migration to Route53, AWS assigned support staff will assist you at their best.

Author:

Abishek Raju, Principal Solution Advocate for AWS, IQ Expert and Cloud Native & Multi-Cloud Technology Evangelist & Business Advisor — Engineering the Open Cloud Architecture. He is a passionate, highly motivated, self-driven, empowered Entrepreneur from a strong IT Infrastructure background, Founder of Yobitel. He is also chief promoter for CNCF, Nvidia and Cisco, he and his team are designated to build modern applications as Cloud-Native & HPC Stacks: Kubernetes & EKS Marketplace Apps, Sagemaker & IaC Templates for enterprises. He loves SaaS driven technology transformation, constantly sharing ideas to tech communities for global empowerment. Follow him on Twitter at @abishekvr.