SW BBANG

You have a static site sitting in S3, a CloudFront distribution in front of it, and a domain registered in Route 53 — but the moment you try to attach a custom domain with HTTPS, the process branches into ACM certificate validation, CloudFront alternate domain names, and Route 53 alias records, all of which have to be wired together in the right order or the whole thing silently fails. TL;DR: Custom Domain + HTTPS on CloudFront Step What You Do Why It Matters 1 Request ACM certificate in us-east-1 CloudFront only reads ACM certs from us-east-1, regardless of your origin region 2 Add CNAME validation record to Route 53 ACM must verify domain ownership before issuing the cert 3 Attach the issued cert to CloudFront and add the alternate domain name (CNAME) CloudFront will reject HTTPS requests for domains not listed as CNAMEs 4 Point Route 53 alias record to the CloudFront distribution Alias records resolve ...

If you're building a production application that needs to send transactional emails from a custom domain like myapp@mycompany.com , Amazon SES (Simple Email Service) is the AWS-native path — but the domain verification and DNS setup trips up most engineers the first time. This guide walks through exactly which DNS records SES requires, why each one exists, and how to confirm everything is wired correctly from the CLI. TL;DR: Amazon SES Domain Verification Summary DNS Record Type Purpose Required? 3× CNAME (Easy DKIM) Domain ownership verification + DKIM signing Yes — mandatory TXT (SPF) Authorize SES to send on your domain's behalf Strongly recommended CNAME (DMARC) Policy enforcement + deliverability reporting Strongly recommended MX (custom MAIL FROM) Bounce handling via custom subdomain Optional but best practice When you enable Easy DKIM, SES generates three CNAME records. Publishing thos...

If you purchased a domain on GoDaddy — or any other registrar — and now run your infrastructure on AWS, consolidating DNS management under Route 53 eliminates the context-switching tax of juggling two consoles. Transferring a domain to Route 53 is a multi-step process governed by ICANN rules, registrar-specific unlock procedures, and AWS account prerequisites that, if missed in order, will silently stall your transfer for days. TL;DR: Domain Transfer to Route 53 at a Glance Phase Who Acts What Happens Typical Duration 1. Unlock & get auth code You (at current registrar) Disable transfer lock, retrieve EPP/auth code Minutes to hours 2. Initiate transfer in Route 53 You (AWS Console or CLI) Submit domain name, auth code, contact info, pay fee Minutes 3. Email confirmation You (registrant email) Approve transfer via ICANN confirmation email Up to 24 hours 4. Losing registrar approval Current registrar (a...

Your primary EC2 instance just crashed at 2 AM — without an automated failover strategy, your users hit a dead end until you wake up and intervene. This guide walks you through configuring Route 53 Active-Passive DNS failover so that traffic automatically reroutes to a static backup site on S3 the moment your primary server becomes unhealthy. TL;DR Component Role Type Route 53 Health Check Monitors EC2 endpoint health HTTP/HTTPS/TCP probe Primary DNS Record Points to EC2 (Elastic IP) Failover: PRIMARY Secondary DNS Record Points to S3 static website Failover: SECONDARY S3 Static Website Serves backup/maintenance page Passive standby SNS (optional) Alerts on health check failure Notification layer Architecture Overview Before diving into configuration, understand the data flow. Route 53 continuously probes your EC2 endpoint. When the health check fails, Route 53 stops resolving DNS to the PRIMA...

When you provision an Application Load Balancer on AWS, it gets a DNS name like my-alb-1234567890.us-east-1.elb.amazonaws.com — not an IP address. This immediately raises a critical question: how do you map your own domain to it, and does the answer change when your domain is the zone apex ( example.com vs. www.example.com )? TL;DR — Alias vs. CNAME at a Glance Feature CNAME Record Route 53 Alias Record Works at zone apex ( example.com ) ❌ No (RFC 1034 prohibits it) ✅ Yes Target type Any hostname Specific AWS resource endpoints Route 53 query charges Billed per query Free for supported AWS targets Health check integration Not natively integrated Evaluates target health automatically TTL control You set the TTL Route 53 manages TTL automatically ...