In this article, we will delve into the various routing policies offered by Amazon Route 53, a scalable and highly available domain name system (DNS) web service. These routing policies enable intelligent and efficient distribution of traffic to different resources, making your applications more resilient and responsive. Let’s take a closer look at these routing policies and learn how to utilize the weighted routing policy through a hands-on example.
Understanding Amazon Route 53 Routing Policies
1. Simple Routing Policy: The simplest policy involves directing requests towards a specific resource. For instance, if you want users to access a web application hosted on an Amazon EC2 instance via a URL, you can create a resource record within a hosted zone that uses the simple routing policy. This method ensures that requests are sent to the appropriate EC2 instance based on the record.
2. Failover Routing Policy: In a failover scenario, you can configure active-passive setups. For instance, if you have two EC2 instances in separate subnets, both hosting the same application, you can set up a failover routing policy. Initially, traffic would be directed to one instance, and if it becomes unavailable, Route 53 automatically routes traffic to the standby instance.
3. Latency Routing Policy: Latency-based routing directs users to the resource with the lowest latency based on their geographical location. For instance, if you have instances in different regions, users are directed to the instance with the lowest response time, ensuring optimal user experience.
4. Weighted Routing Policy: The weighted routing policy distributes traffic among resources based on predefined weights. For instance, if you have instances in different regions and want to distribute traffic evenly between them, you can assign equal weights to both resources. This policy is highly customizable and beneficial for scenarios where you want to balance load across multiple resources.
5. Geo-location Routing Policy: This policy routes traffic based on user geographical locations. If you have instances in different regions and want users from specific regions to access resources located nearby, this policy is useful. It enhances performance and reduces latency for users in their respective regions.
6. Multi-value Answer Routing Policy: In this policy, multiple healthy records are returned to the user. For instance, if you have multiple healthy instances running the same application, Route 53 sends back all their IP addresses, allowing the client to choose one for connecting. This enhances redundancy and fault tolerance.
Hands-On Example: Utilizing Weighted Routing Policy
Now, let’s walk through a hands-on example using the weighted routing policy.
Step 1: Accessing AWS and Route 53 Log in to your AWS account and navigate to the Route 53 console.
Step 2: Setting Up a Hosted Zone Create or select a hosted zone corresponding to your domain name. For this example, we’ll use the domain “wizzlabtest.com.”
Step 3: Creating Resource Records Create two resource records within the hosted zone, each pointing to different instances (server A and server B).
- Record for Server A:
- Name: wizzlabtest.com
- Value: Server A’s public IP address
- Routing Policy: Weighted
- Weight: 50
- ID: 1
- Record for Server B:
- Name: wizzlabtest.com
- Value: Server B’s public IP address
- Routing Policy: Weighted
- Weight: 50
- ID: 2
Step 4: Verification Access “vislabtest.com/default.html” from different machines. You’ll notice that the weighted routing policy directs traffic to both Server A and Server B based on the assigned weights.
Conclusion
In this chapter, we explored the diverse routing policies available in Amazon Route 53. Each policy serves a specific purpose, enhancing the performance, availability, and fault tolerance of your applications. By using the weighted routing policy in a hands-on example, you gained practical experience in distributing traffic evenly among different resources. This knowledge equips you to make informed decisions about selecting the most suitable routing policy for your applications’ requirements. As you continue your journey with Amazon Route 53, you’ll be better prepared to optimize your applications’ performance and reliability.