Why DNS management matters in AWS - See It in Action

Why DNS Management Matters

📖 Scenario: You are setting up a website for a small business. To make sure customers can find the website easily, you need to manage the website's domain name system (DNS) settings correctly.

🎯 Goal: Build a simple AWS Route 53 hosted zone configuration that shows how DNS management connects a domain name to a website's IP address.

📋 What You'll Learn

Create a hosted zone for the domain example.com in AWS Route 53.

Add an A record that points www.example.com to the IP address 192.0.2.44.

Add a CNAME record that points blog.example.com to www.example.com.

Use clear variable names and simple AWS CLI commands or JSON configuration.

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

Managing DNS records is essential for making websites and services reachable by friendly domain names instead of IP addresses.

💼 Career

Cloud engineers and DevOps professionals often configure DNS settings to ensure reliable access to cloud-hosted applications.

1

Create the hosted zone data structure

Create a JSON object called hosted_zone with the key Name set to "example.com." and the key CallerReference set to "unique-string-12345".

AWS

# Create the hosted_zone JSON object
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Think of hosted_zone as the container for your domain's DNS settings.

2

Add the A record configuration

Create a JSON object called a_record with the keys Name set to "www.example.com.", Type set to "A", and TTL set to 300. Add a key ResourceRecords which is a list containing one object with the key Value set to "192.0.2.44".

AWS

hosted_zone = {
    "Name": "example.com.",
    "CallerReference": "unique-string-12345"
}
# Create the a_record JSON object
# Your code here

Need a hint?

The A record connects the domain name to an IP address.

3

Add the CNAME record configuration

Create a JSON object called cname_record with the keys Name set to "blog.example.com.", Type set to "CNAME", and TTL set to 300. Add a key ResourceRecords which is a list containing one object with the key Value set to "www.example.com.".

AWS

hosted_zone = {
    "Name": "example.com.",
    "CallerReference": "unique-string-12345"
}
a_record = {
    "Name": "www.example.com.",
    "Type": "A",
    "TTL": 300,
    "ResourceRecords": [
        {"Value": "192.0.2.44"}
    ]
}
# Create the cname_record JSON object
# Your code here

Need a hint?

The CNAME record points one domain name to another domain name.

4

Combine records into a Route 53 change batch

Create a JSON object called change_batch with a key Changes that is a list containing two objects. The first object has keys Action set to "CREATE" and ResourceRecordSet set to a_record. The second object has keys Action set to "CREATE" and ResourceRecordSet set to cname_record.

AWS

hosted_zone = {
    "Name": "example.com.",
    "CallerReference": "unique-string-12345"
}
a_record = {
    "Name": "www.example.com.",
    "Type": "A",
    "TTL": 300,
    "ResourceRecords": [
        {"Value": "192.0.2.44"}
    ]
}
cname_record = {
    "Name": "blog.example.com.",
    "Type": "CNAME",
    "TTL": 300,
    "ResourceRecords": [
        {"Value": "www.example.com."}
    ]
}
# Create the change_batch JSON object
# Your code here

Need a hint?

This change batch groups your DNS record creations for AWS Route 53.