Route 53 CNAME vs Alias

AWS Route 53 Alias vs CNAME

Route 53 CNAME vs Alias Records
~ Last updated on : ~ jayendrapatil

AWS Route 53 Alias vs CNAME

  • Route 53 Alias records are similar to CNAME records, but there are some important differences.
  • Supported Resources
    • Alias records support selected AWS resources
      • Elastic Load Balancers
      • CloudFront distributions
      • API Gateway
      • Elastic Beanstalk
      • S3 Website
      • Global Accelerator
      • VPC Interface Endpoints
      • Route 53 record in the same hosted zone
    • Alias records do not support
      • EC2 DNS endpoint
      • RDS DNS endpoint
    • CNAME record can redirect DNS queries to any DNS record
  • Zone Apex or Root domain like example.com
    • Alias record supports mapping Zone Apex records
    • CNAME record does not support Zone Apex records
  • Charges
    • Route 53 doesn’t charge for alias queries to AWS resources
    • Route 53 charges for CNAME queries.
  • Record Type
    • Alias records only support A or AAAA record types
    • CNAME record redirects DNS queries for a record name regardless of the record type specified in the DNS query, such as A or AAAA.

Route 53 Alias vs CNAME Comparison

Route 53 CNAME vs Alias Records

AWS Certification Exam Practice Questions

  • Questions are collected from Internet and the answers are marked as per my knowledge and understanding (which might differ with yours).
  • AWS services are updated everyday and both the answers and questions might be outdated soon, so research accordingly.
  • AWS exam questions are not updated to keep up the pace with AWS updates, so even if the underlying feature has changed the question might not be updated
  • Open to further feedback, discussion and correction.
  1. Which of the following statements are true about Amazon Route 53 resource records? Choose 2 answers
    1. An Alias record can map one DNS name to another Amazon Route 53 DNS name.
    2. A CNAME record can be created for your zone apex.
    3. An Amazon Route 53 CNAME record can point to any DNS record hosted anywhere.
    4. TTL can be set for an Alias record in Amazon Route 53.
    5. An Amazon Route 53 Alias record can point to any DNS record hosted anywhere.
  2. How can the domain’s zone apex for example “myzoneapexdomain com” be pointed towards an Elastic Load Balancer?
    1. By using an AAAA record
    2. By using an A record
    3. By using an Amazon Route 53 CNAME record
    4. By using an Amazon Route 53 Alias record

References

AWS_Route_53_Alias_CNAME_Comparision