How do I use Amazon Route 53 with a Digital Ocean droplet?

Question

I have a good understanding of DNS but this is my first time using Amazon for domain registration.

I registered a domain using Route 53 and changed the NS records to match the ones in the hosted zone file I created for the domain name. Then I created an A record pointing to the IP address of my droplet on Digital Ocean.

I'm sure I'm missing something, but do I need to set up DNS on Digital Ocean? Wouldn't that negate the benefits of using Route 53 for DNS?

I've been using Digital Ocean and a "traditional" domain name registrar for a long time now and never had a problem letting DO handle the DNS - using amazon as the registrar and Route53 as the DNS is throwing me off.

I followed Amazons instructions for setting up route 53 with a third-party registrar, but when I follow the same directions using them as a registrar, the domain name is not resolving. No response on ping.

When I try to set the name servers to digital ocean, it fails. Any help would be much appreciated.

Answer 1

In this case, AWS is acting both as your registrar and your DNS host. Your NS records should be set to those shown on the Route 53 Hosted Zone page. The NS record varies for each domain name, but it will be something like ns-384.awsdns-48.com.

You do not need to configure DNS in Digital Ocean, because Route 53 is acting as your DNS host.

You'll need to get the IP address of your DO droplet, and create a DNS record in Route 53. For example, you might want to create an A record for www.example.com which points to the IP of your droplet.