Values specific for geoproximity records

When you create geoproximity records, you specify the following values.

Routing policy

Choose Geoproximity.

Record name

Enter the name of the domain or subdomain that you want to route traffic for. The default value is the name of the hosted zone.

Enter the same name for all of the records in the group of geoproximity records.

For more information about record names, see Record name.

Record type

The DNS record type. For more information, see Supported DNS record types.

Select the same value for all of the records in the group of geoproximity records.

TTL (seconds)

The amount of time, in seconds, that you want DNS recursive resolvers to cache information about this record. If you specify a longer value (for example, 172800 seconds, or two days), you reduce the number of calls that DNS recursive resolvers must make to Route 53 to get the latest information in this record. This has the effect of reducing latency and reducing your bill for Route 53 service. For more information, see How Amazon Route 53 routes traffic for your domain.

However, if you specify a longer value for TTL, it takes longer for changes to the record (for example, a new IP address) to take effect because recursive resolvers use the values in their cache for longer periods before they ask Route 53 for the latest information. If you're changing settings for a domain or subdomain that's already in use, we recommend that you initially specify a shorter value, such as 300 seconds, and increase the value after you confirm that the new settings are correct.

If you're associating this record with a health check, we recommend that you specify a TTL of 60 seconds or less so clients respond quickly to changes in health status.

Value/Route traffic to

Choose IP address or another value depending on the record type. Enter a value that is appropriate for the value of Record type. For all types except CNAME, you can enter more than one value. Enter each value on a separate line.

You can route traffic to, or specify the following values:

For more information about the above values, see common values for Value/Route traffic to.

Endpoint location

You can specify the resource endpoint location by using one of the following:

You can also identify the Local Zones Group for a specific Local Zone by using the describe-availability-zones CLI command:

aws ec2 describe-availability-zones --region us-west-2 --all-availability-zones --query "AvailabilityZones[?ZoneName=='us-west-2-den-1a']" | grep "GroupName"

This command returns: "GroupName": "us-west-2-den-1", specifying that the Local Zone us-west-2-den-1a belongs to the Local Zone Group us-west-2-den-1.

You can't create non-geoproximity records that have the same values for Record name and Record type as geoproximity records.

You also can't create two geoproximity resource record sets that specify the same location for the same record name and record type.

Bias

A bias either expands or shrinks a geographic area from which Route 53 routes traffic to a resource. A positive bias expands the area, and a negative bias shrinks it. For more information, see How Amazon Route 53 uses bias to route traffic.

Health check

Select a health check if you want Route 53 to check the health of a specified endpoint and to respond to DNS queries using this record only when the endpoint is healthy.

Route 53 doesn't check the health of the endpoint specified in the record, for example, the endpoint specified by the IP address in the Value field. When you select a health check for a record, Route 53 checks the health of the endpoint that you specified in the health check. For information about how Route 53 determines whether an endpoint is healthy, see How Amazon Route 53 determines whether a health check is healthy.

Associating a health check with a record is useful only when Route 53 is choosing between two or more records to respond to a DNS query, and you want Route 53 to base the choice in part on the status of a health check. Use health checks only in the following configurations:

If your health checks specify the endpoint only by domain name, we recommend that you create a separate health check for each endpoint. For example, create a health check for each HTTP server that is serving content for www.example.com. For the value of Domain Name, specify the domain name of the server (such as us-east-2-www.example.com), not the name of the records (example.com).

For geoproximity records, if an endpoint is unhealthy, Route 53 looks for a closest endpoint that is still healthy.

Record ID

Enter a value that uniquely identifies this record in the group of geoproximity records.