AWS Certified SysOps Administrator - Associate: Cost-Efficient Solution for Route 53 Name Records

Optimizing Route 53 Name Records for Cost-Efficiency and Global Latency

Question

A Start-up company is launching a new web application using AWS Cloud infrastructure.

This is a three-tier application behind load balancers with content stored in Amazon S3 buckets within a region & CloudFront to cache data.

The company plans to use its own domain name.

Web content should be delivered at the lowest latency to global users.

Which of the following is a cost-efficient solution while creating name records with Route 53?

Answers

Explanations

Click on the arrows to vote for the correct answer

A. B. C. D.

Correct Answer: B.

An Alias record can be created to redirect traffic to specific AWS resources.

The company can create an alias record for its domain name pointing to CloudFront Distribution.

When a user accesses a web application from any region, it would be redirected to the nearest CloudFront edge location and fetch web content with the lowest latency.

Option A & D are incorrect as creating a CNAME record with Route 53 involves charges.

Option C is incorrect as although this will work.

But requirement of the lowest latency for global users will not meet with storing web content in the S3 bucket.

For more information on the difference between Alias & CNAME records, refer to the following URLs-

https://docs.aws.amazon.com/Route53/latest/DeveloperGuide/resource-record-sets-choosing-alias-non-alias.html

The best option for the startup company to efficiently create name records with Route 53 for delivering web content at the lowest latency to global users is to create an Alias record for the web application pointing to CloudFront distribution. Therefore, the correct answer is option B.

Explanation:

A three-tier application behind load balancers with content stored in Amazon S3 buckets within a region and CloudFront to cache data, is a typical scenario for a modern web application infrastructure on AWS.

Route 53 is the AWS Domain Name System (DNS) web service that can be used to manage domain names and perform domain registration. Route 53 provides high availability and scalability with automatic failover capabilities.

To deliver web content at the lowest latency to global users, the company should use a content delivery network (CDN) service, like CloudFront. CloudFront is an AWS service that speeds up the distribution of static and dynamic web content, like HTML, CSS, and images, to users across the world by caching the content in edge locations closer to the users.

The startup company plans to use its own domain name, which can be managed by Route 53. To map the domain name to the web application infrastructure, the company needs to create name records in Route 53. There are two types of Route 53 name records that can be used: CNAME and Alias.

A CNAME record maps a domain name to another domain name. For example, a CNAME record can be used to map www.example.com to example.com.

An Alias record maps a domain name to an AWS resource, like an ELB, CloudFront distribution, or S3 bucket, by providing a Route 53-specific DNS name for the resource. Alias records can be used to map the root domain name, like example.com, and subdomains, like www.example.com, to AWS resources.

In the given scenario, the company needs to map its own domain name to the web application behind load balancers with content stored in Amazon S3 buckets within a region and CloudFront to cache data. The best option for this is to use an Alias record for the web application pointing to CloudFront distribution. This way, the company can take advantage of CloudFront's caching capabilities to deliver web content at the lowest latency to global users.

Option A, creating a CNAME record for the web application pointing to Amazon S3 bucket with the same name, is not recommended because it does not take advantage of CloudFront's caching capabilities and may result in higher latency for global users.

Option C, creating an Alias record for the web application pointing to Amazon S3 bucket with the same name, is not recommended because it does not take advantage of CloudFront's caching capabilities and may result in higher latency for global users.

Option D, creating a CNAME record for the web application pointing to CloudFront distribution, is not recommended because it does not provide the benefits of Alias records, like automatic failover and improved performance, and may result in higher latency for global users.