Route 53

Question 1

What does DNS stand for?

Answer 1

Domain Name System

Question 2

What does DNS do?

Answer 2

Translates domain names into IP addresses.

Question 3

What is a Top-Level Domain (TLD)?

Answer 3

The last segment of the domain, e.g., .com, .org.

Question 4

What is a Second-Level Domain (SLD)?

Answer 4

The domain directly before the TLD, e.g., amazon.com.

Question 5

What is Route 53?

Answer 5

AWS’s scalable and highly available authoritative DNS service.

Question 6

Why is Route 53 called that?

Answer 6

53 is the port number used by DNS.

Question 7

What are common DNS record types?

Answer 7

A, AAAA, CNAME, NS

Question 8

What does an A record do?

Answer 8

Maps a hostname to an IPv4 address.

Question 9

What does an AAAA record do?

Answer 9

Maps a hostname to an IPv6 address.

Question 10

What does a CNAME record do?

Answer 10

Maps a hostname to another hostname.

Question 11

What is an NS record?

Answer 11

Specifies the name servers for a hosted zone.

Question 12

What is a hosted zone in Route 53?

Answer 12

A container for DNS records that define how you route traffic for a domain and its subdomains.

Question 13

What is TTL in Route 53?

Answer 13

Time to Live – how long DNS records are cached.

Question 14

When to use high TTL?

Answer 14

Less traffic to Route 53 but possibly outdated records.

Question 15

When to use low TTL?

Answer 15

Frequent updates and faster propagation of changes.

Question 16

What is the difference between CNAME and Alias?

Answer 16

CNAME can’t be used for root domains; Alias can and is free.

Question 17

Can Alias records be used at root domain level?

Answer 17

Yes.

Question 18

Can you set TTL for Alias records?

Answer 18

No, Route 53 manages it automatically.

Question 19

What are common targets for Alias records?

Answer 19

ELB, CloudFront, API Gateway, S3 websites, Route 53 records.

Question 20

Can you use Alias records for EC2 DNS?

Answer 20

No.

Question 21

What does a simple routing policy do?

Answer 21

Routes to a single resource or randomly among multiple.

Question 22

What is a weighted routing policy?

Answer 22

Distributes traffic across resources by assigned weights.

Question 23

Can weighted records have health checks?

Answer 23

Yes.

Question 24

What is latency routing?

Answer 24

Routes traffic to the region with the lowest latency.

Question 25

What is failover routing?

Answer 25

Routes traffic to a secondary resource if the primary is unhealthy.

Question 26

What is geolocation routing?

Answer 26

Routes based on user's physical location.

Question 27

What is geoproximity routing?

Answer 27

Routes traffic based on proximity and bias (expand/shrink).

Question 28

What is multi-value answer routing?

Answer 28

Returns multiple healthy resources, up to 8.

Question 29

What is Route 53 Traffic Flow?

Answer 29

A visual tool to manage complex routing configurations.

Question 30

What is a calculated health check?

Answer 30

Combines multiple health checks using logical operations.

Question 31

What is a CloudWatch alarm health check?

Answer 31

Monitors metrics like RDS or custom values for health.

Question 32

How does Route 53 perform health checks?

Answer 32

Using HTTP/HTTPS/TCP from multiple global checkers.

Question 33

What status codes mean a successful health check?

Answer 33

2xx and 3xx.

Question 34

What is the interval for health checks?

Answer 34

Default 30s; can be 10s (at extra cost).

Question 35

Can health checks check private resources?

Answer 35

Yes, using CloudWatch alarms.

Question 36

What is a domain registrar?

Answer 36

A service to buy and register domain names.

Question 37

Can you use Route 53 with third-party domains?

Answer 37

Yes, by updating NS records to Route 53's servers.