Amazon Web Services (AWS) today announced it will offer Domain Name System (DNS) service, which it is calling Amazon Route 53, the name coming from the fact that DNS servers respond to queries on port 53 and route end users accordingly.
The service is designed to give developers and businesses a reliable and cost effective way to route end users to Internet applications. Route 53 effectively connects user requests to infrastructure running in Amazon Web Services (AWS) — such as an Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) instance, an Amazon Elastic Load Balancer, or an Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) bucket — and can also be used to route users to infrastructure outside of AWS.
The service also has a self-service API that makes it easy to create and manage DNS records for your domains. Some of the most commonly used APIs and their functionality include:
CreateHostedZone: Creates a new hosted zone to contain your DNS data. After creating a Hosted Zone, you receive four name servers to which you can delegate your domain.
GetHostedZone: Lists information about a specific hosted zone.
DeleteHostedZone: Deletes a hosted zone.
ChangeResourceRecordSets: Populates and edits the DNS resource records in a hosted zone.
ListResourceRecordSets: Retrieves either all the resource record sets in a hosted zone or filtered by record name and type.
The mission-critical nature of DNS demands the highest level of reliability. Amazon Route 53 uses a network of DNS servers located across the globe, which enables businesses anywhere in the world to leverage the highly available AWS infrastructure to achieve the level of dependability required to keep their web applications available. Amazon Route 53 also lets customers place strict controls over who can manage their DNS system by allowing integration with AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM). This gives customers greater control over user access, including the ability to grant unique credentials and permissions for each user within their AWS account.
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A reliable, cloud-based DNS service has been one of the most requested offerings by our customers. With Route 53, you can create a “hosted zone” to add DNS records for a new domain or transfer DNS records for a domain you currently own. Route 53 is also designed to work well with other AWS offerings, such as AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM). By using AWS IAM with Route 53, you can control who in your organization can make changes to your DNS records. The company plans to add additional integration features such as the ability to automatically tie your Amazon Elastic Load Balancer instances to a DNS name, and the ability to route your customers to the closest EC2 region.
There are no long-term contracts or minimum usage commitments for using Route 53. Pricing starts at$1.00 per month for the hosted zones you manage, $0.50 per million queries for the first billion queries, and $0.25 per million queries above a billion. More information is available at the Amazon Route 53 detail page.