How do I migrate my DNS services from a third-party DNS provider to Amazon Lightsail?

Short description

There are three scenarios for transferring your DNS services:

• Scenario A: Move the entire name server setup of your domain from the third-party DNS provider to Amazon Lightsail.
• Scenario B: Move the entire name server setup of your sub domain from a third-party DNS provider to AWS and not the entire domain.
• Scenario C: Point your domain (for example: xyz.abc.com) to the Lightsail instance, but don't move the DNS servers.

Resolution

Scenario A: Move the entire name server setup of your domain from the third-party DNS provider to Amazon Lightsail

1.    Open the Amazon Lightsail console.

2.    Select Networking, Create DNS Zone.

Note: For more information on creating a DNS zone, see Create a DNS zone in the Lightsail console.

3.    Enter the domain, and then select Create DNS Zone. An example domain is abc.com. You receive a set of four name servers.

4.    Add more DNS records in the newly created DNS zone. Refer to the DNS record details in your current DNS provider. Copy all the records to your Lightsail DNS zone, one at a time.

5.    After all the records are copied and you're ready to switch your domain's name server to Lightsail, go to your domain's current registrar portal. Replace the current name servers with the new servers you received in step 3. Replace the name servers in the name servers section in the domain's current registrar portal, not in the DNS zone of the current DNS provider.

6.    Select Save.

Note: Allow time for the name server change to propagate through the internet's DNS. This might take several hours.

Scenario B: Move the entire name server setup of your sub domain from a third-party DNS provider to AWS and not the entire domain

1.    Open the Amazon Lightsail console.

2.    Select Networking, Create DNS Zone.

Note: For more information on creating a DNS zone, see Create a DNS zone in the Lightsail console.

3.    Enter the domain, and then select Create DNS Zone. An example domain is xyz.abc.com. You will receive a set of four name servers.

4.    Open the DNS records at your third-party DNS provider. Create 4 new DNS records using NS as the record type. In this example, the record name is xyz and the value is each of the name servers you received in step 3.

5.    Open the Amazon Lightsail console and then open the DNS zone. Create a DNS record pointing xyz.abc.com to the Lightsail instance. For more information see Add records to the DNS zone.

Scenario C: Point your domain (for example: xyz.abc.com) to the Lightsail instance, but don't move the DNS servers

In this scenario, you don't need to create a Lightsail DNS zone. Create an A record in your third-party DNS provider for your domain (for example, xyz.abc.com). Then point it to the Lightsail instance's IP address. Now the website loads from the Lightsail instance.

Note: It might take a few hours for DNS propagation.

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Related information

Pointing your domains to your Amazon Lightsail distributions