Four decades ago, erstwhile the Berkeley Internet Name Domain Server launched, it stored DNS records successful "zone files". You could edit these files successful vi, but BIND had to beryllium told to reload them earlier your changes took effect. Later, different DNS servers came along, for illustration Daniel Bernstein's tinydns, which served records straight retired of a database connected disk — but moreover there, after editing the human-readable DNS records, it was basal to recompile the database file.
With Route 53 Files, it becomes imaginable to usage modular UNIX package to edit your DNS without needing immoderate further steps. It makes your hosted zones accessible arsenic record systems; this intends changes you make to records in the record strategy are automatically reflected successful Route 53, and changes made in Route 53 done immoderate different transmission — the AWS Management Console, the Route 53 API, the AWS CLI — automatically look successful the record system. A Route 53 Files record strategy tin beryllium attached to aggregate compute resources, enabling shared entree to your zones crossed teams without duplication.
Until now, you had to take betwixt the Route 53 console, the Route 53 API, and the devices built connected apical of them. Route 53 Files eliminates that tradeoff. Your hosted area becomes the cardinal hub for each your organization's DNS records. It's accessible straight from immoderate AWS compute instance, container, or function, whether you're moving accumulation applications, responding to an incident, aliases building agentic AI systems.
You tin entree immoderate enrolled nationalist aliases backstage hosted area arsenic a autochthonal file system connected your Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) instances, containers running connected Amazon Elastic Container Service (Amazon ECS) aliases Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (Amazon EKS), aliases AWS Lambda functions. The record system presents each assets grounds group arsenic a record and each grounds sanction arsenic a directory, supporting modular Network File System (NFS) v4.1+ operations like creating, reading, updating, and deleting DNS records.
Alias records are presented arsenic symbolic links to their targets, so ls -l renders them the measurement you would expect and readlink does what you would hope. Cross-zone aliases are presented arsenic dangling symbolic links — arsenic they should be, fixed that their targets are not inside the aforesaid record system.
Under the hood, Route 53 Files uses S3 Files and delivers ~90s latency for a record prevention to scope unrecorded DNS, and up to 6 minutes of latency for a alteration made elsewhere successful Route 53 to look successful your mount. (Note that changes reaching live DNS does not guarantee that they are instantly visible worldwide; the latency for world visibility of DNS changes depends connected grounds TTLs and caching behaviour.) The record strategy supports concurrent entree from multiple compute resources pinch last-write-wins conflict resolution, making it ideal for shared workloads that mutate charismatic DNS, specified arsenic AI agents collaborating done file-based devices and on-call engineers reverting each other's changes utilizing sed.
Let maine show you really to get started.
Creating my first Route 53 Files record system, mounting it, and editing DNS from an EC2 lawsuit is straightforward. In this example, I already have a Route 53 hosted area and an EC2 lawsuit wherever I want to equine it.
First, I navigate to the Route 53 Files Console and create IAM roles. These are needed to let Route 53 Files to create resources successful my AWS relationship and publication and constitute to my existing Route 53 hosted zone.
I capable successful my 12-digit AWS relationship ID and the Route 53 hosted area ID I'm planning connected using; if I wanted to I could specify aggregate hosted zones or even "*" to let each Route 53 hosted zones to beryllium enrolled. When I click "Create bundle", a tarball is generated wrong the web browser containing IAM domiciled policies pinch precisely the privileges required; if you're paranoid about information (as you should be), you tin audit the role-generation code to corroborate that it isn't trying to assistance immoderate unnecessary privileges.
Having downloaded the bundle, I extract it and tally the included book to create the roles. There's besides a README.txt record wrong the tarball with instructions, including explaining what you request to set if you want to permit further hosted zones to beryllium enrolled astatine a later date.
Having now created the basal IAM roles, I tin proceed to enrol a Route 53 hosted area into Route 53 Files. I participate my AWS relationship ID, my Route 53 hosted area ID, the AWS Region I want to create the Route 53 Files file strategy successful — I'm Canadian, truthful I picked ca-central-1 — and the outer ID is autofilled from erstwhile I created the domiciled bundle. If I come backmost to this page later I tin get the outer ID from the README.txt file successful the domiciled bundle tarball I generated. (The External ID makes sure that you, and only you, tin enrol your hosted zone; it's besides used if you ever want to extremity utilizing Route 53 Files.)
When I enrolled my hosted zone, I was fixed a record strategy ID of the form "fs-0123456789abcdef0" and now I tin create a equine target. Route 53 Files is compatible pinch S3 Files, truthful I usage the aforesaid command:
$ aws s3files create-mount-target \ --file-system-id fs-0123456789abcdef0 \ --subnet-id <a subnet successful that VPC> \ --security-groups <a group allowing TCP 2049 from your clients> \ --region <your region> Note that since Route 53 Files uses NFS, you'll request to usage a security group that allows entree to larboard TCP/2049.Once my equine target is available, I tin equine it connected my EC2 instance. I've already confirmed that I person amazon-efs-utils version 3.0.0 aliases later and botocore installed, and my EC2 lawsuit has an IAM Role attached containing the AmazonS3FilesClientFullAccess policy.
$ sudo mkdir -p /mnt/r53fs/example.com $ sudo equine -t s3files -o nodirects3read \ fs-0123456789abcdef0 /mnt/r53fs/example.comEditing DNS pinch Route 53 Files
I tin now edit my DNS utilizing modular command-line tools. Within the file system, foo/TYPE is simply a TYPE grounds named "foo"; successful keeping with DNS tradition, the typical sanction "@" refers to the area apex. For example:
$ echo 1.2.3.4 | sudo tee /mnt/r53fs/example.com/@/A creates an A grounds for the area apex, example.com, with the worth 1.2.3.4. If I want to usage round-robin DNS, I can simply create a 2nd grounds successful the aforesaid grounds set: $ echo 5.6.7.8 | sudo tee -a /mnt/r53fs/example.com/@/A and since the record has 2 lines location will now beryllium 2 IP addresses returned via DNS.I want the www big to othername the area apex, truthful I create a symlink:
$ sudo mkdir /mnt/r53fs/example.com/www $ sudo ln -s ../@/A /mnt/r53fs/example.com/www/AIf I want to trim grounds TTLs successful beforehand of a migration, I simply need to create a .TTL related file:
$ echo 60 | sudo tee /mnt/r53fs/example.com/@/A.TTL and the alteration is promptly reflected successful unrecorded DNS; without a .TTL sibling the default worth of 300 seconds is used.Wildcard records — e.g. *.example.com — are named exactly arsenic you expect; note, however, that * expands successful astir shells so you'll request to flight it if moving from the bid line:
$ sudo mkdir /mnt/r53fs/example.com/\* $ echo www.example.com | sudo tee /mnt/r53fs/example.com/\*/CNAMEOf course, record systems tin beryllium accessed by immoderate tooling, not conscionable astatine the command line; for example, we tin update DNS from a cron job:
$ echo "*/5 * * * * guidelines day > /mnt/r53fs/daemonology.net/vixie/TXT" | sudo tee -a /etc/crontab $ slumber 600 $ excavation +short -t txt vixie.daemonology.net "Tue Aug 25 00:20:01 UTC 2026"Things to know
Let maine stock immoderate important method specifications that I deliberation you'll find useful.
- Route 53 Files integrates pinch AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) for access control. Every domiciled is created by you. The work holds no role-creation authority; if you region the IAM Roles, the work will immediately and silently extremity working.
- If the aforesaid grounds is changed successful the record strategy and successful Route 53 astatine the same time, we purpose for last-write-wins. This is not strictly possible, since Route 53 does not expose modification timestamps connected records, so sometimes we make an knowledgeable conjecture based connected erstwhile the grounds was changed in the record strategy and the model wrong which we cognize the grounds changed in Route 53.
- A constitute that Route 53 rejects is reported successful a .error file alongside the record. This happens asynchronously, aft the malformed data arrives astatine Route 53; if you look for an .error file immediately aft penning a record, you won't spot it yet.
- Routing policies, DNSSEC-specific grounds types, and Aliases with EvaluateTargetHealth group to existent are not supported astatine this time. Any records recovered successful Route 53 which are not supported by Route 53 Files will beryllium reported successful a .r53fs-unsupported record successful the file system root.
- Changes will look successful Route 53 a play of clip aft you stop editing a record. Consistent pinch S3 Files, if you clasp a record unfastened and make continuous changes to it, the changes will not propagate to Route 53.
- In bid to support matter editors which move aliases delete files earlier writing new files, location is simply a short hold-down period; moving vi www/A should not consequence successful NXDOMAIN errors.
What customers are saying
Corey Quinn, Chief Cloud Economist, Duckbill:
"I've spent years telling group that Route 53 is simply a database. Colin embraced this righteous accuracy for illustration a champion, and this insane thing is miles amended than the existent Route 53 API, which is an embarrassment to databases everywhere. There are nary alteration timestamps, it features nary events, and for immoderate godforsaken logic has a ChangeBatch schema that sounds for illustration XML that learned JSON successful prison. Meanwhile echo and tee sewage my grounds unrecorded successful 72 seconds. Thanks, Colin!"Pricing and availability
Route 53 Files is disposable coming successful each commercialized AWS Regions except Middle East (Bahrain) and Middle East (UAE). Note that since Route 53's control level operates wholly successful the us-east-1 region, a location outage affecting us-east-1 will forestall your Route 53 Files record systems from updating DNS — though they will still beryllium accessible successful their own regions.
You salary for the infrastructure created by Route 53 Files wrong your AWS account, but the Route 53 Files work itself is free.
I'd emotion to perceive really you usage this caller capability. Feel free to stock your feedback successful the comments below.
— cperciva
Frequently Asked Questions
Q. Is this an charismatic AWS service?
A. Of people not; but I'd beryllium happy to fto them person it if they're crazy enough
to want to support it.
Q. Why didn't this motorboat connected April 1st?
A. Because S3 Files launched successful early April and I didn't want to hold until
April 2027.
Q. Why expose DNS zones complete NFS alternatively of a FUSE record system?
A. Because it's funnier. Also, because that's what S3 Files does (but I
repeat myself).
Q. What happens if you tally rm -rf *?
A. Route 53 Files attempts to delete each of your DNS records, of course;
what other would it do? (Note that Route 53 doesn't let you to delete
your hosted zone's SOA aliases apex NS records, truthful those records will silently
reappear successful the record system.)
Q. Is location an SLA?
A. Yes, I guarantee a 100% refund of fees paid successful immoderate period where
availability is little than 110%.
Q. Is this HIPAA compliant?
A. Please do not shop diligent accusation successful DNS.
Q. Did anyone astatine Amazon cognize you were doing this?
A. Absolutely not. If they knew, they would person had to effort to extremity me.
Amazonians aren't conscionable group I activity with; they're my friends, and I don't
want anyone to get successful problem for maine being irredeemably weird.
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