Deep Dive into the Pros of Amazon Route 53
Published: 2024-01-03 22:03:22

## Introduction
Amazon Route 53 is a highly available and scalable Domain Name System (DNS) with a very reliable domain registration, routing capabilities, internet traffic management, consistent health checks and failover and importantly, it is secure. 

**Key Features of Amazon Route 53**

**Domain Registration**
_Domain is a unique address used to access websites_. 

First, check if your domain is available to use. If your chosen domain is already taken, try to change the top-level domain such as .com to another top-level domains like .ke, .us, .uk based on country or .org as an organization others like .io. 
During registration, you will provide your names and contact details. After registration process, Amazon will send your information to the domain registrar for your domain registration. The registry will finalize the task by storing your domain information into their database. 

**DNS Routing:**
It ensures that queries and responses between devices and DNS Servers is distributed according the configured weights.
It is achieved when a user clicks on a link in a browser and then searches for the corresponding IP address by sending DNS request to the servers therefore a response is generated according to the user’s request. 

**Traffic Management:**
Amazon Route 53 uses rules to dictate how to route traffic on the web by using direct percentages of data traffic to particular endpoints or by defining a reserve endpoint when the server is not healthy. 

**Health Checks and Failover**
Amazon Route 53 has a health monitor that checks the health and performance of your web applications, web servers, Amazon CloudWatch alarm and other resources. 
Carrying out health checks often to services is very important as it shows whether or not a particular server is capable of performing work successfully. 
You can view the current status of your health checks on Route 53 console, AWS SDKs, AWS CLI or the Route 53 API. 
You can also configure Amazon CloudWatch alarm to receive a notification on the status of a health check. 
In case for a failover, you can configure your Route 53 to route your traffic from an unhealthy resource to a health resource. 

**DSN Security:**
Security in Amazon Route 53 is the highest priority. Security is a shared responsibility between you and AWS which means AWS is responsible for protection of AWS services and its infrastructure and your responsibility is determined by the AWS service that you use. 

**COMMON USES**

**Hosting websites**
Amazon Route 53 enables user to host websites after purchasing a domain name and then uploading your website on S3 bucket and finally directing your domain to the S3 bucket. 

**Load balancing traffic**
Route 53 helps you to distribute network traffic equally across a pool of resources that support an application. It controls internet traffic between the application servers and clients therefore improves its scalability, availability and performance.

**Disaster Recovery**
Route 53 is well designed using the architected framework to ensure data is available in case of a crisis. By using the automatic failover method, you can ensure your resources are still available and easily accessible by establishing a failover routing policy if Route 53. 

**Global Content Delivery**
By creating a domain name using Amazon Route 53, the domain is easily accessible all over the world by a single click on a link by the user. Going Global is achieved by building your infrastructure and configuring your AWS Regions and Availability Zones which are connected with low-latency and high-throughput networking.

**Routing based of health checks**
Health checks helps maintain a suitable web service that is reliable and available. With Amazon Route 53 Application Recovery Controller, you can set up routing control health checks to manage internet traffic failover for your application.

**Failover routing**
Failover routing will redirect your internet production traffic from the affected region to the recovery region. 

**DNS ROUTING**

**Simple routing policy:**
This is the use of a single resource to perform a given function for your domain. This policy can be used to create records in a private hosted zone.

**Weighted routing:**
This is used to route traffic to multiple resources based on your assigned proportions or weights. Use in a scenario where you want to control the distribution of traffic among different resources.
 
**Latency-based routing:**
Use this service when you happen to have resources in multiple AWS Regions but a certain region offers the best latency.

**Geolocation based routing:**
This type of routing is used when your users are in different locations and you want to route traffic to best suit their needs.
 
**Multi-value routing:**
Use this service when you have more than eight healthy records selected and you want Route 53 to respond to its DNS queries. 

**Failover routing:**
Use this service to automatically redirect from an unhealthy resource to a healthy resource in case of a crisis to enhance resilience of your applications. 

_Amazon Route 53 is an amazing web service for hosting websites and other cutting edge technologies that makes sure the developer and the client receives the best quality service at a go._