Route 53 – Alias Records

• AWS-specific DNS extension that maps a hostname to an AWS resource (e.g., ALB, CloudFront, API Gateway).

• Can be used at the Zone Apex (example.com), unlike CNAME.

• Always of type A (IPv4) or AAAA (IPv6).

• TTL is managed by AWS, not manually configurable.

• Auto-updates if the AWS resource’s IP changes.

Valid Targets

• Elastic Load Balancers

• CloudFront distributions

• API Gateway

• Elastic Beanstalk environments

• S3 static website endpoints

• VPC interface endpoints

• AWS Global Accelerator

• Another Route 53 record in the same hosted zone

Restrictions

• Not allowed for EC2 public DNS names.