DNS in Amazon Lightsail - Amazon Lightsail

DNS in Amazon Lightsail

People can access the web application on your Lightsail instance by browsing to the public internet protocol (IP) address of your instance, which could be an IPv4 or IP6 address. However, IP addresses are complex and difficult for people to remember. Therefore, you should have people browse to an easy-to-remember domain name, like example.com, to access the web application on your instance. This is achieved through the Domain Name System (DNS), which functions as a directory that maps registered domain names to IP addresses.

To route traffic for your domain name to your Lightsail instance, you add an address (A) record that points your domain name to the static IPv4 address of your instance, or a AAAA record that points to the IPv6 address of your instance. If you registered a domain name using Lightsail, you can manage the DNS records from the DNS zone that was created when you registered the domain name. If your domain was registered through another registrar, you can manage the DNS records at the registrar or you can transfer management of your domain's DNS to Lightsail.

To make it easier to map your domain name to your Lightsail instance, we recommend that you transfer management of your domain's DNS records to Lightsail by creating a DNS zone. For more information, see Create a DNS zone to manage your domain’s DNS records. You can create up to six DNS zones in Lightsail. If you require more than six DNS zones, we recommend using Route 53 to manage the DNS of all your domains. You can use Route 53 to point your domain name to your Lightsail instance. For more information about managing DNS with Route 53, see Use Amazon Route 53 to point a domain to an instance.

DNS terminology

So that you can manage DNS for your domain, there are terms you should be familiar with.

Apex domain / root domain

An apex domain, also known as a root domain, is a domain that does not contain a subdomain part. An example of an apex domain is example.com. Whereas, subdomain examples are www.example.com and blog.example.com. These are subdomains because they contain the www and blog subdomain parts respectively.

Domain Name System (DNS)

DNS routes easy-to-remember domain names, such as example.com, to the IP addresses of web servers.

For more information, see Domain Name System on Wikipedia.

DNS record

A DNS record is a mapping parameter. It tells the DNS server which IP address or hostname a domain or subdomain is associated with.

For more information, see List of DNS record types on Wikipedia.

DNS zone

A DNS zone is a container that holds information about how you want to route traffic on the internet for a specific domain, such as example.com, and its subdomains, such as blog.example.com.

For more information, see DNS zone on Wikipedia.

Domain name registrar

A domain name registrar, also known as a domain name provider, is a company or organization that manages the assignment of domain names. You can purchase a domain or manage an existing domain using Lightsail, Amazon Route 53 or any other domain name registrar.

For more information, see Domain name registrar on Wikipedia.

Name server

A name server routes traffic to your domain. In Lightsail, the name server is an AWS instance that runs a network service to help translate easy-to-remember domain names to IP addresses. Lightsail provides several AWS name server options (e.g., ns-NN.awsdns-NN.com) to route traffic to your domain. You can choose from among these AWS name servers when you change your domain using a domain registrar.

For more information, see Name server on Wikipedia.

Subdomain

A subdomain is anything in the domain hierarchy, other than the root domain, that is part of the larger domain. For example, blog is the subdomain part of the blog.example.com subdomain.

For more information, see Subdomain on Wikipedia.

Time to live (TTL)

TTL dictates the lifespan of a DNS record on local resolving name servers; for example, a shorter time means less time to wait until the changes go into effect. TTL cannot be configured in the Lightsail DNS zone. Instead, all Lightsail DNS records default to a TTL of 60 seconds.

For more information, see Time to live on Wikipedia.

Wildcard DNS record

A wildcard DNS record matches requests for non-existent domain names. A wildcard DNS record is specified by using the asterisk symbol (*) as the leftmost part of a domain name, such as *.example.com or *example.com.

Note

Lightsail DNS zones support wildcard records for name server domains (*awsdns.com) defined in a Name Server (NS) record.

DNS record types supported in the Lightsail DNS zone

Address (A) record

An A record maps a domain, such as example.com, or a subdomain, such as blog.example.com, to a web server’s IP address.

For example, in the Lightsail DNS zone, you want to direct web traffic for example.com (the apex of the domain) to your instance. You would create an A record, enter an @ symbol into the Subdomain text box, and enter the IP address of your web server into the Resolves to address text box.

For more information about the A record, see List of DNS record types on Wikipedia.

AAAA record

An AAAA record maps a domain, such as example.com, or a subdomain, such as blog.example.com, to a web server’s IPv6 address.

For example, in the Lightsail DNS zone, you want to direct web traffic for example.com (the apex of the domain) to your instance over the IPv6 protocol. You would create an AAAA record, enter an @ symbol into the Subdomain text box, and enter the IP address of your web server into the Resolves to address text box.

For more information about the AAAA record, see the Domain Name System for IPv6 on Wikipedia.

Note

Lightsail does not support static IPv6 addresses. If you delete your Lightsail resource and create a new resource, or if you disable and re-enable IPv6 on the same resource, you might need to update your AAAA record to reflect the latest IPv6 address for the resource.

Canonical name (CNAME) record

A CNAME record maps an alias or subdomain, such as blog.example.com, to another domain or subdomain.

For example, in the Lightsail DNS zone, you want to direct web traffic for www.example.com to example.com. You would create an alias CNAME record for www with a "resolves to" address of example.com.

For more information, see CNAME Record on Wikipedia.

Mail exchanger (MX) record

An MX record maps a subdomain, such as mail.example.com, to an email server address with values for priority when multiple servers are defined.

For example, in the Lightsail DNS zone you want to direct mail for mail.example.com to the 10 inbound-smtp.us-west-2.amazonaws.com Amazon WorkMail server. You would create an MX record with a subdomain of example.com, a priority of 10, and a "resolves to" address of inbound-smtp.us-west-2.amazonaws.com.

For more information, see MX Record on Wikipedia.

Name server (NS) record

An NS record delegates a subdomain, such as test.example.com, to a name server, such as ns-NN.awsdns-NN.com.

For more information, see Name server on Wikipedia.

Service locator (SRV) record

An SRV record maps a subdomain, such as service.example.com, to a service address with values for priority, weight, and port number. Telephony or instant messaging are a couple of the services typically associated with SRV records.

For example, in the Lightsail DNS zone, you want to direct traffic for service.example.com to 1 10 5269 xmpp-server.example.com. You would create an SRV record with a priority of 1, a weight of 10, a port number of 5269, and a "maps to" address of xmpp-server.example.com.

For more information, see SRV Record on Wikipedia.

Text (TXT) record

A TXT record maps a subdomain to plaintext. You create TXT records to confirm ownership of your domain to a service provider.

For example, in the Lightsail DNS zone, you want to respond with 23223a30-7f1d-4sx7-84fb-31bdes7csdbb when the _amazonchime.example.com hostname is queried. You would create a TXT record with a subdomain value of _amazonchime and a "responds with" value of 23223a30-7f1d-4sx7-84fb-31bdes7csdbb.

For more information, see TXT Record on Wikipedia.