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Routing traffic for a domain in Route 53 to an Amazon Lightsail container service

Last updated: September 24, 2021

You can route traffic for a registered domain, such as example.com, to the applications running on a Lightsail container service. You do this by adding an alias record to the hosted zone of your domain that points to the default domain of your Lightsail container service.

In this tutorial, we show you how to add an alias record for your Lightsail container service to a DNS zone in Route 53. You can do this only by using the AWS Command Line Interface (AWS CLI). It cannot be done using the Route 53 console.

Note

If you're using Lightsail to host the DNS of your domain, then you should add the alias record to the DNS zone of your domain in Lightsail. For more information, see Routing traffic for a domain in Amazon Lightsail to a Lightsail container service.

Contents:

Step 1: Complete the prerequisites

Complete the following prerequisites if you haven't already:

Step 2: Get the hosted zone IDs for Lightsail container services

You must specify a hosted zone ID for your Lightsail container service when you add an alias record to a hosted zone in Route 53. For example, if your Lightsail container service is in the US West (Oregon) (us-west-2) AWS Region, then you must specify hosted zone ID Z0959753D43BBB908BAV when adding an alias record for your Lightsail container service to a hosted zone in Route 53.

Following are the hosted zone IDs for each AWS Region in which you can create a Lightsail container service.

EU (London) (eu-west-2): Z0624918ZXDYQZLOXA66

US East (N. Virginia) (us-east-1): Z06246771KYU0IRHI74W4

Asia Pacific (Singapore) (ap-southeast-1): Z0625921354DRJH4EY9V0

EU (Ireland) (eu-west-1): Z0624732FELAMMKW3Y21

Asia Pacific (Tokyo) (ap-northeast-1): Z0626125UAU4JWQ9JSKN

Asia Pacific (Seoul) (ap-northeast-2): Z06260262XZM84B2WPLHH

Asia Pacific (Mumbai) (ap-south-1): Z10460781IQMISS0I0VVY

Asia Pacific (Sydney) (ap-southeast-2): Z09597943PQQZATPFE96E

Canada (Central) (ca-central-1): Z10450993RIRIJJUUMA5W

Europe (Frankfurt) (eu-central-1): Z06137433FV04OY4EC6L0

Europe (Stockholm) (eu-north-1): Z016970523TDG2TZMUXKK

Europe (Paris) (eu-west-3): Z09594631DSW2QUR7CFGO

US East (Ohio) (us-east-2): Z10362273VJ548563IY84

US West (Oregon) (us-west-2): Z0959753D43BBB908BAV

Step 3: Create a record set JSON file

When you add a DNS record to the hosted zone of your domain in Route 53 using the AWS CLI, you must specify a set of configuration parameters for the record. The easiest way to do this is by creating a JSON (.json) file that contains all of the parameters, and then referencing the JSON file in your AWS CLI request.

Complete the following procedure to create a JSON file with the record set parameters for the alias record:

  1. Open a text editor, such as Notepad on Windows or Nano on Linux.

  2. Copy and paste the following text into the text editor:

    {
 "Comment": "Comment",
 "Changes": [
 {
 "Action": "CREATE",
 "ResourceRecordSet": {
 "Name": "Domain.",
 "Type": "A",
 "AliasTarget": {
 "HostedZoneId": "LightsailContainerServiceHostedZoneID",
 "DNSName": " LightsailContainerServiceAddress.",
 "EvaluateTargetHealth": true
 }
 }
 }
 ]
}

    In your file, replace the following example text with your own:

    • Comment with a personal note or comment about the record set.

    • Domain with the registered domain name that you want to use with your Lightsail container service (for example, example.com or www.example.com). To use the root of your domain with your Lightsail container service, you must specify an @ symbol in the subdomain space of your domain (for example, @.example.com).

    • LightsailContainerServiceHostedZoneID with the hosted zone ID for the AWS Region in which you created your Lightsail container service. For more information, see Step 2: Get the hosted zone IDs for Lightsail container services earlier in this guide.

    • LightsailContainerServiceAddress with the public domain name of your Lightsail container service. You can get this by signing in to the Lightsail console, browsing to your container service, and copying the Public domain listed in the header section of the container service management page (for example, container-service-1.q8cexampleljs.us-west-2.cs.amazonlightsail.com).

    Example:

    {
 "Comment": "Alias record for Lightsail container service",
 "Changes": [
 {
 "Action": "CREATE",
 "ResourceRecordSet": {
 "Name": "@.example.com.",
 "Type": "A",
 "AliasTarget": {
 "HostedZoneId": "Z0959753D43BBB908BAV",
 "DNSName": "container-service-1.q8cexampleljs.us-west-2.cs.amazonlightsail.com.",
 "EvaluateTargetHealth": true
 }
 }
 }
 ]
}

  3. Save the file to your local directory as change-resource-record-sets.json.

Step 4: Add a record to the hosted zone of your domain in Route 53

Complete the following procedure to add a record to the hosted zone of your domain in Route 53 using the AWS CLI. You do this by using the  change-resource-record-sets command. For more information, see change-resource-record-sets in the AWS CLI Command Reference.

Note

You must install the AWS CLI and configure it for Lightsail and Route 53 before continuing with this procedure. For more information, see Configuring the AWS Command Line Interface to work with Amazon Lightsail.

  1. Open a Command Prompt or Terminal window.

  2. Enter the following command to add a record to the hosted zone of your domain in Route 53.

    aws route53 change-resource-record-sets --hosted-zone-id HostedZoneID --change-batch PathToJsonFile

    In the command, replace the following example text with your own:

    • HostedZoneID with the ID of the hosted zone for your registered domain in Route 53. Use the list-hosted-zones command to get a list of IDs for the hosted zones in your Route 53 account.

    • PathToJsonFile with the local directory folder path on your computer of the .json file that contains the record parameters. For more information, see the Step 3: Create a record set JSON file section earlier in this guide.

    Examples:

    On a Linux or Unix computer:

    aws route53 change-resource-record-sets --hosted-zone-id Z123456789ABCDEFGHIJ --change-batch home/user/awscli/route53/change-resource-record-sets.json

    On a Windows computer:

    aws route53 change-resource-record-sets --hosted-zone-id Z123456789ABCDEFGHIJ --change-batch file://C:\awscli\route53\change-resource-record-sets.json

    You should see a result similar to the following example:

    Result of the change resource record sets request

    Allow time for the change to propagate through the internet's DNS, which might take several hours. After that is completed, internet traffic for your registered domain in Route 53 should begin routing to your Lightsail container service.

Additional information about container services

These are the general steps to manage your Lightsail container service:

  1. Get familiar with all of the elements of Lightsail container services. For more information, see Container services in Amazon Lightsail.

  2. Create your container service in your Lightsail account. For more information, see Creating Amazon Lightsail container services.

  3. If you plan to use container images from a public registry, find container images that you want to use from a public registry like the Amazon ECR Public Gallery or Docker Hub. For more information about Amazon ECR Public, see What Is Amazon Elastic Container Registry Public? in the Amazon ECR Public User Guide. For more information about Docker Hub, see Docker Hub Quickstart in the Docker documentation.

  4. If you plan to push container images from your local machine to your service, install software on your local machine that you need to create your own container images and push them to your Lightsail container service. For more information, see the following guides:

  5. Create a deployment in your container service that configures and launches your containers. For more information, see Creating and managing deployments for your Amazon Lightsail container services.

  6. View previous deployments for your container service. You can create a new deployment using a previous deployment version. For more information, see Viewing and managing deployment versions of your Amazon Lightsail container services.

  7. View the logs of containers on your container service. For more information, see Viewing the container logs of your Amazon Lightsail container services.

  8. Create an SSL/TLS certificate for the domains that you want to use with your containers. For more information, see Creating SSL/TLS certificates for your Amazon Lightsail container services.

  9. Validate the SSL/TLS certificate by adding records to the DNS of your domains. For more information, see Validating SSL/TLS certificates for your Amazon Lightsail container services.

  10. Enable custom domains by attaching a valid SSL/TLS certificate to your container service. For more information, see Enabling and managing custom domains for your Amazon Lightsail container services.

  11. Monitor the utilization metrics of your container service. For more information, see Viewing container service metrics in Amazon Lightsail.

  12. (Optional) Scale the capacity of your container service vertically, by increasing its power specification, and horizontally, by increasing its scale specification. For more information, see Changing the capacity of your Amazon Lightsail container services.

  13. Delete your container service if you're not using it to avoid incurring monthly charges. For more information, see Deleting Amazon Lightsail container services.