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  1. Stackups
  2. Application & Data
  3. Infrastructure as a Service
  4. Dns Management
  5. Amazon Route 53 vs CoreDNS

Amazon Route 53 vs CoreDNS

OverviewDecisionsComparisonAlternatives

Overview

Amazon Route 53
Amazon Route 53
Stacks14.5K
Followers9.4K
Votes678
CoreDNS
CoreDNS
Stacks48
Followers68
Votes5
GitHub Stars13.5K
Forks2.3K

Amazon Route 53 vs CoreDNS: What are the differences?

Introduction

Amazon Route 53 and CoreDNS are two popular DNS (Domain Name System) services that provide domain name resolution for web applications and services. While both services serve a similar purpose, there are key differences that set them apart from each other. In this article, we will explore six of these differences and examine how they impact their respective functionalities.

  1. Infrastructure: Amazon Route 53 is a managed DNS service provided by Amazon Web Services (AWS) and is fully integrated with other AWS services, offering seamless integration and scalability. On the other hand, CoreDNS is an open-source, lightweight DNS server that can be deployed in various environments, including on-premises and in the cloud. It provides flexibility in terms of deployment options and offers extensibility through plugins.

  2. Features and Functions: Amazon Route 53 offers a wide range of advanced features and functions, including traffic management, health checks, and geographic routing, making it well-suited for complex and enterprise-level DNS requirements. CoreDNS, while less feature-rich compared to Route 53, provides a simpler and more lightweight DNS solution, focusing on quick and efficient DNS resolution.

  3. Pricing: As an AWS service, Amazon Route 53 follows AWS pricing models, which can be complex and offer different pricing tiers based on usage. In contrast, CoreDNS is an open-source project and is free to use, making it a more cost-effective option for organizations with limited budgets or smaller-scale deployments.

  4. Ease of Use: Amazon Route 53 offers a user-friendly management console with a graphical interface, making it easy to set up and manage DNS configurations. CoreDNS, being open source, requires manual configuration through text-based configuration files, which may require a higher level of technical expertise to set up and maintain.

  5. Integration: Amazon Route 53 seamlessly integrates with other AWS services, such as Amazon CloudFront and Elastic Load Balancing, providing a comprehensive and integrated solution for application developers. CoreDNS, although it can be integrated with various systems using plugins, does not offer the same level of integration and pre-built integrations with cloud services.

  6. Support and Community: Amazon Route 53 benefits from the extensive support network provided by AWS and offers dedicated technical support for its users. CoreDNS, being an open-source project, relies on community support and may not have the same level of professional support available as Route 53.

In summary, Amazon Route 53 and CoreDNS differ in terms of infrastructure, features, pricing, ease of use, integration capabilities, and support options. Organizations with complex requirements, extensive integration needs, and a reliance on AWS services may find Amazon Route 53 to be the more suitable option. On the other hand, organizations seeking a lightweight, cost-effective, and flexible DNS solution may opt for CoreDNS.

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Advice on Amazon Route 53, CoreDNS

Eric
Eric

Service Engineer at Zix Corporation

Aug 5, 2020

Needs adviceonAmazon Route 53Amazon Route 53

We are looking for advice / best-practices / caveats about migrating off BIND on to Unbound https://nlnetlabs.nl/projects/unbound/about/ for internal & external (customer-facing) DNS. Is unbound suitable for this, or is it only recommended for caching? How easy or difficult is it to move 10000's of existing BIND DNS zone entries? We already use Amazon Route 53 for our AWS instances and Cloud DNS for our GCP ones, but would like to maintain internal DNS for cost, control, and latency reasons.

58.6k views58.6k
Comments

Detailed Comparison

Amazon Route 53
Amazon Route 53
CoreDNS
CoreDNS

Amazon Route 53 is designed to give developers and businesses an extremely reliable and cost effective way to route end users to Internet applications by translating human readable names like www.example.com into the numeric IP addresses like 192.0.2.1 that computers use to connect to each other. Route 53 effectively connects user requests to infrastructure running in Amazon Web Services (AWS) – such as an Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) instance, an Amazon Elastic Load Balancer, or an Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) bucket – and can also be used to route users to infrastructure outside of AWS.

CoreDNS is a DNS server. It is written in Go. It can be used in a multitude of environments because of its flexibility

Highly Available and Reliable – Route 53 is built using AWS’s highly available and reliable infrastructure. The distributed nature of our DNS servers helps ensure a consistent ability to route your end users to your application. Route 53 is designed to provide the level of dependability required by important applications. Amazon Route 53 is backed by the Amazon Route 53 Service Level Agreement.;Scalable – Route 53 is designed to automatically scale to handle very large query volumes without any intervention from you.;Designed for use with other Amazon Web Services – Route 53 is designed to work well with other AWS features and offerings. You can use Route 53 to map domain names to your Amazon EC2 instances, Amazon S3 buckets, Amazon CloudFront distributions, and other AWS resources. By using the AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) service with Route 53, you get fine grained control over who can update your DNS data. You can use Route 53 to map your zone apex (example.com versus www.example.com) to your Elastic Load Balancing instance or Amazon S3 website bucket using a feature called Alias record.;Simple – With self-service sign-up, Route 53 can start to answer your DNS queries within minutes. You can configure your DNS settings with the AWS Management Console or our easy-to-use API. You can also programmatically integrate the Route 53 API into your overall web application. For instance, you can use Route 53’s API to create a new DNS record whenever you create a new EC2 instance.;Fast – Using a global anycast network of DNS servers around the world, Route 53 is designed to automatically route your users to the optimal location depending on network conditions. As a result, the service offers low query latency for your end users, as well as low update latency for your DNS record management needs.;Cost-Effective – Route 53 passes on the benefits of AWS’s scale to you. You pay only for managing domains through the service and the number of queries that the service answers for each of your domains, at a low cost and without minimum usage commitments or any up-front fees.;Secure – By integrating Route 53 with AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM), you can grant unique credentials and manage permissions for every user within your AWS account and specify who has access to which parts of the Route 53 service.;Flexible – Route 53 offers Weighted Round-Robin (WRR), also known as DNS load balancing. This lets you assign weights to your DNS records that specify what portion of your traffic is routed to various endpoints.
Plugins; Service Discovery; Fast and Flexible
Statistics
GitHub Stars
-
GitHub Stars
13.5K
GitHub Forks
-
GitHub Forks
2.3K
Stacks
14.5K
Stacks
48
Followers
9.4K
Followers
68
Votes
678
Votes
5
Pros & Cons
Pros
  • 185
    High-availability
  • 148
    Simple
  • 103
    Backed by amazon
  • 76
    Fast
  • 54
    Auhtoritive dns servers are spread over different tlds
Cons
  • 2
    Geo-based routing only works with AWS zones
  • 2
    SLOW
  • 1
    Restrictive rate limit
Pros
  • 3
    Kubernetes Integration
  • 2
    Open Soure

What are some alternatives to Amazon Route 53, CoreDNS?

DNSimple

DNSimple

DNSimple provides the tools you need to manage your domains. We offer both a carefully crafted web interface for managing your domains and DNS records, as well as an HTTP API with various code libraries and tools. Buy, connect, operate!

Google Cloud DNS

Google Cloud DNS

Use Google's infrastructure for production quality, high volume DNS serving. Your users will have reliable, low-latency access to Google's infrastructure from anywhere in the world using our network of Anycast name servers.

Dyn

Dyn

An all-in-one Managed DNS service for your registered domain names. Dyn DNS is the perfect solution for your domain name’s DNS needs, whether it is for personal or business use. It gives you complete control over your DNS zone and its associated DNS records, complete with a simple DNS management web interface.

DNS Made Easy

DNS Made Easy

DNS Made Easy is a subsidiary of Tiggee LLC, and is a world leader in providing global IP Anycast enterprise DNS services. DNS Made Easy is currently ranked the fastest provider for 8 consecutive months and the most reliable provider.

NS1

NS1

NS1’s intelligent DNS & traffic management platform, with its data driven architecture and unique Filter Chain routing engine, is purpose-built for the most demanding, mission-critical applications on the Internet.

nextdns

nextdns

Cloud-based private DNS service that gives you full control over what is allowed and what is blocked on the Internet. Think of it as a combination of Cloudflare DNS and Pi-hole®.

InboxKit

InboxKit

InboxKit automates your entire cold email infrastructure. Buy domains, provision Google Workspace and Microsoft 365 mailboxes, configure DNS, and export to 16+ sequencers — all from one dashboard. Scale from 10 to 10,000 mailboxes without the manual setup headache.

Modern DDoS Protection & Edge Security Platform

Modern DDoS Protection & Edge Security Platform

Protect and accelerate your apps with Trafficmind’s global edge — DDoS defense, WAF, API security, CDN/DNS, 99.99% uptime and 24/7 expert team.

BIND9

BIND9

It is a versatile name server software. It has evolved to be a very flexible, full-featured DNS system. Whatever your application is, it probably has the required features.

PowerDNS

PowerDNS

It features a large number of different backends ranging from simple BIND style zonefiles to relational databases and load balancing/failover algorithms. A DNS recursor is provided as a separate program.

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