Why should I use Amazon Route 53 over my registrar's DNS servers?
I am building a site that I anticipate will have high usage. Currently, my registrar (GoDaddy) is handling DNS. However, Amazon's Route 53 looks interesting. They promise high speed and offer globally distributed DNS servers and a programmable interface. While GoDaddy doesn't offer a programmable interface, I assume their servers are geographically distributed as well.
What are the main reasons I should opt to use Amazon Route 53 over free registrar-based DNS?
Solution 1:
GoDaddy [...] I assume their servers are geographically distributed
Don't assume, verify with GoDaddy or verify it yourself. A quick traceroute to nsX.secureserver.com (a common DNS server name for GoDaddy) gives me a response from a datacenter here in Scandinavia where I live. So yes, it seems that GoDaddy has its nameservers spread out over at least the US and Europe. But check the nameservers assigned to your domain.
main reasons I should opt to use Amazon Route 53
Amazon has clearly documented how their server setup is. They use Anycast, and have DNS servers in 15+ locations worldwide. Their service seems well engineered for high uptime.
Having your DNS resolve from 15+ locations worldwide makes your website a little bit faster for your end users. It also allows you to use a lower TTL, which means in case of a website failure, you can move your service over to a new IP faster.
In the future, Amazon plans to integrate Route53 with their other cloud offerings. If you uses some of these, such as EC2 and Elastic Load Balancer, then you will benefit from this integration. What they'll build isn't known yet, but one-step setup of Elastic Load Balancing and health check integration with CloudWatch seem like reasonable guesses.
Solution 2:
Don't assume anything about GoDaddy. I've found them to be awful on many occasions.
I personally have a separate DNS host to my domain registrar, because the DNS host provides a better service (more adjustable records, rather than just A and CNAME).
From what I've seen, Route53 is supposed to be quite inexpensive, at least in line with Dynect's offering for globally available DNS.
If I was in your position, I sure as hell wouldn't be using any of GoDaddy's services. They've proved to me on a number of occasions that they can't be trusted. There's plenty of questions on here where the root of the problem was GoDaddy's incompetance.
Solution 3:
As of May 2011 there is now an SLA for Route53, 100% availability backed by service credits if they fail:
AWS will use commercially reasonable efforts to make Amazon Route 53 100% Available (defined below). In the event Amazon Route 53 does not meet the foregoing commitment, you will be eligible to receive a Service Credit as described below.
Definitions “100% Available” means that Amazon Route 53 did not fail to respond to your DNS queries during a monthly billing cycle.
A “Service Credit” is a dollar credit, calculated as set forth below, that we may credit back to an eligible Amazon Route 53 account.
Service Credits are calculated based on 1 day of Service Credit, which is equal to your average daily Route 53 query charges for the monthly billing cycle preceding the monthly billing cycle in which the period that Amazon Route 53 was not 100% Available occurred, and are available as follows:Duration Amazon Route 53 was not 100% Available
5 - 30 minutes - 1 day Service Credit, 31 minutes - 4 hours - 7 days Service Credit, More than 4 hours - 30 days Credit
Solution 4:
Now Amazon introduces an Amazon Route 53 console in the AWS Management Console. So now you get AWS console benefits while working with Route 53.
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