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I am planning to change the registration of a domain from Hover to AWS. In preparation, I am first going to change the Name Servers over from Hovers own DNS to Amazons Route 53.

Currently, I have created a Route 53 Hosted zone for the domain that I am planning on moving and have replicated the DNS entries to be identical. I have also set all of the DNS records to have a TTL of 5 min (and am now waiting 2 days to ensure the changes are global). Unfortunately, Hover does not allow you to set TTL for Name Servers and their documentation says it can take 24-48hrs for the change to occur

With this strategy, is there any risk of downtime when I make the nameserver switch?

Since the DNS records are identical, I believe it should be seamless with the old and new DNS servers still working as expected and users with the old nameservers cached being sent to the old Hover DNS and then being routed to their destination.

Am I missing anything or is there any additional advice to ensure there is no Downtime?

This is a very active domain and can not afford any downtime. Thank you!

ShadowZzz
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  • You can check [This](http://social.dnsmadeeasy.com/blog/change-dns-providers-no-downtime/) But I think this is similar to : https://serverfault.com/questions/799737/how-to-change-name-server-and-have-least-downtime – champion-runner Oct 02 '19 at 16:45
  • I have already read most of the related questions/answers here. In this case, what I want to clarify is that since the endpoints on the DNS are not changing, there should not be any downtime right? Since all requests will use ethere the new or old nameservers and get to the exact same place. I just want to ensure that my logic is not flawed in some way. – ShadowZzz Oct 02 '19 at 17:39
  • *"have replicated the DNS entries to be identical"* Note also that this should not include the `NS` and `SOA` records that Route 53 creates, by default, in the hosted zone. Those need to be left alone and should not be copied from the old service. – Michael - sqlbot Oct 03 '19 at 01:58
  • @Michael-sqlbot Yes, I have only copied over the existing records from Hover. I have not copied anything back from AWS (which was only the auto-generated records). – ShadowZzz Oct 03 '19 at 10:48
  • @ShadowZzz what I'm referring to here is that assuming Hover has existing `NS` and `SOA` records that you can see, then those records should not be copied **to** AWS. – Michael - sqlbot Oct 03 '19 at 13:05
  • Yes, I did not copy over the NS and SOA records. I copied everything else. Thanks! – ShadowZzz Oct 16 '19 at 21:04

1 Answers1

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Provided that both of your nameservers are active and updated (which you mentioned is true) while the DNS propogration takes place, there will be no downtime due to DNS-based errors.

Since there are two nameservers running at once, a client's DNS request will hit the old one or the new one, and both are running with the correct records. This means that regardless of which nameserver the request hits, there will be an appropriate response.

After the nameserver change takes place, I would reccomend using a tool like this one to confirm that your new nameservers are in fact working before switching off Hover's DNS.

rhw555
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