This component is responsible for provisioning the primary DNS zones into an AWS account. By convention, we typically provision the primary DNS zones in the dns account. The primary account for branded zones (e.g. example.com), however, would be in the prod account, while staging zone (e.g. example.qa) might be in the staging account.

The zones from the primary DNS zone are then expected to be delegated to other accounts via the dns-delegated component. Additionally, external records can be created on the primary DNS zones via the record_config variable.

Architecture

Summary

The dns account gets a single dns-primary component deployed. Every other account that needs DNS entries gets a single dns-delegated component, chaining off the domains in the dns account. Optionally, accounts can have a single dns-primary component of their own, to have apex domains (which Cloud Posse calls "vanity domains"). Typically, these domains are configured with CNAME (or apex alias) records to point to service domain entries.

Details

The purpose of the dns account is to host root domains shared by several accounts (with each account being delegated its own subdomain) and to be the owner of domain registrations purchased from Amazon.

The purpose of the dns-primary component is to provision AWS Route53 zones for the root domains. These zones, once provisioned, must be manually configured into the Domain Name Registrar's records as name servers. A single component can provision multiple domains and, optionally, associated ACM (SSL) certificates in a single account.

Cloud Posse's architecture expects root domains shared by several accounts to be provisioned in the dns account with dns-primary and delegated to other accounts using the dns-delegated component, with each account getting its own subdomain corresponding to a Route 53 zone in the delegated account. Cloud Posse's architecture requires at least one such domain, called "the service domain", be provisioned. The service domain is not customer facing, and is provisioned to allow fully automated construction of host names without any concerns about how they look. Although they are not secret, the public will never see them.

Root domains used by a single account are provisioned with the dns-primary component directly in that account. Cloud Posse calls these "vanity domains". These can be whatever the marketing or PR or other stakeholders want to be.

After a domain is provisioned in the dns account, the dns-delegated component can provision one or more subdomains for each account, and, optionally, associated ACM certificates. For the service domain, Cloud Posse recommends using the account name as the delegated subdomain (either directly, e.g. "plat-dev", or as multiple subdomains, e.g. "dev.plat") because that allows dns-delegated to automatically provision any required host name in that zone.

There is no automated support for dns-primary to provision root domains outside of the dns account that are to be shared by multiple accounts, and such usage is not recommended. If you must, dns-primary can provision a subdomain of a root domain that is provisioned in another account (not dns). In this case, the delegation of the subdomain must be done manually by entering the name servers into the parent domain's records (instead of in the Registrar's records).

The architecture does not support other configurations, or non-standard component names.

Usage

Stack Level: Global

Here's an example snippet for how to use this component. This component should only be applied once as the DNS zones it creates are global. This is typically done via the DNS stack (e.g. gbl-dns.yaml).

components:
  terraform:
    dns-primary:
      vars:
        domain_names:
          - example.net
        record_config:
          - root_zone: example.net
            name: ""
            type: A
            ttl: 60
            records:
              - 53.229.170.215
          # using a period at the end of a name
          - root_zone: example.net
            name: www.
            type: CNAME
            ttl: 60
            records:
              - example.net
          # using numbers as name requires quotes
          - root_zone: example.net
            name: "123456."
            type: CNAME
            ttl: 60
            records:
              - example.net
          # strings that are very long, this could be a DKIM key
          - root_zone: example.net
            name: service._domainkey.
            type: CNAME
            ttl: 60
            records:
              - !!str |-
                YourVeryLongStringGoesHere

Tip

Use the acm component for more advanced certificate requirements.

Requirements

Name	Version
terraform	>= 1.0.0
aws	>= 4.9.0

Providers

Name	Version
aws	>= 4.9.0

Modules

Name	Source	Version
acm	cloudposse/acm-request-certificate/aws	0.16.3
iam_roles	../account-map/modules/iam-roles	n/a
this	cloudposse/label/null	0.25.0

Resources

Name	Type
aws_route53_record.aliasrec	resource
aws_route53_record.dnsrec	resource
aws_route53_record.soa	resource
aws_route53_zone.root	resource

Inputs

Name	Description	Type	Default	Required
additional_tag_map	Additional key-value pairs to add to each map in tags_as_list_of_maps. Not added to tags or id. This is for some rare cases where resources want additional configuration of tags and therefore take a list of maps with tag key, value, and additional configuration.	map(string)	{}	no
alias_record_config	DNS Alias Record config	list(object({ root_zone = string name = string type = string zone_id = string record = string evaluate_target_health = bool }))	[]	no
attributes	ID element. Additional attributes (e.g. workers or cluster) to add to id, in the order they appear in the list. New attributes are appended to the end of the list. The elements of the list are joined by the delimiter and treated as a single ID element.	list(string)	[]	no
context	Single object for setting entire context at once. See description of individual variables for details. Leave string and numeric variables as null to use default value. Individual variable settings (non-null) override settings in context object, except for attributes, tags, and additional_tag_map, which are merged.	any	{ "additional_tag_map": {}, "attributes": [], "delimiter": null, "descriptor_formats": {}, "enabled": true, "environment": null, "id_length_limit": null, "label_key_case": null, "label_order": [], "label_value_case": null, "labels_as_tags": [ "unset" ], "name": null, "namespace": null, "regex_replace_chars": null, "stage": null, "tags": {}, "tenant": null }	no
delimiter	Delimiter to be used between ID elements. Defaults to - (hyphen). Set to "" to use no delimiter at all.	string	null	no
descriptor_formats	Describe additional descriptors to be output in the descriptors output map. Map of maps. Keys are names of descriptors. Values are maps of the form {<br/> format = string<br/> labels = list(string)<br/>} (Type is any so the map values can later be enhanced to provide additional options.) format is a Terraform format string to be passed to the format() function. labels is a list of labels, in order, to pass to format() function. Label values will be normalized before being passed to format() so they will be identical to how they appear in id. Default is {} (descriptors output will be empty).	any	{}	no
dns_soa_config	Root domain name DNS SOA record: - awsdns-hostmaster.amazon.com. ; AWS default value for administrator email address - 1 ; serial number, not used by AWS - 7200 ; refresh time in seconds for secondary DNS servers to refresh SOA record - 900 ; retry time in seconds for secondary DNS servers to retry failed SOA record update - 1209600 ; expire time in seconds (1209600 is 2 weeks) for secondary DNS servers to remove SOA record if they cannot refresh it - 60 ; nxdomain TTL, or time in seconds for secondary DNS servers to cache negative responses See SOA Record Documentation for more information.	string	"awsdns-hostmaster.amazon.com. 1 7200 900 1209600 60"	no
domain_names	Root domain name list, e.g. ["example.net"]	list(string)	null	no
enabled	Set to false to prevent the module from creating any resources	bool	null	no
environment	ID element. Usually used for region e.g. 'uw2', 'us-west-2', OR role 'prod', 'staging', 'dev', 'UAT'	string	null	no
id_length_limit	Limit id to this many characters (minimum 6). Set to 0 for unlimited length. Set to null for keep the existing setting, which defaults to 0. Does not affect id_full.	number	null	no
label_key_case	Controls the letter case of the tags keys (label names) for tags generated by this module. Does not affect keys of tags passed in via the tags input. Possible values: lower, title, upper. Default value: title.	string	null	no
label_order	The order in which the labels (ID elements) appear in the id. Defaults to ["namespace", "environment", "stage", "name", "attributes"]. You can omit any of the 6 labels ("tenant" is the 6th), but at least one must be present.	list(string)	null	no
label_value_case	Controls the letter case of ID elements (labels) as included in id, set as tag values, and output by this module individually. Does not affect values of tags passed in via the tags input. Possible values: lower, title, upper and none (no transformation). Set this to title and set delimiter to "" to yield Pascal Case IDs. Default value: lower.	string	null	no
labels_as_tags	Set of labels (ID elements) to include as tags in the tags output. Default is to include all labels. Tags with empty values will not be included in the tags output. Set to [] to suppress all generated tags. Notes: The value of the name tag, if included, will be the id, not the name. Unlike other null-label inputs, the initial setting of labels_as_tags cannot be changed in later chained modules. Attempts to change it will be silently ignored.	set(string)	[ "default" ]	no
name	ID element. Usually the component or solution name, e.g. 'app' or 'jenkins'. This is the only ID element not also included as a tag. The "name" tag is set to the full id string. There is no tag with the value of the name input.	string	null	no
namespace	ID element. Usually an abbreviation of your organization name, e.g. 'eg' or 'cp', to help ensure generated IDs are globally unique	string	null	no
record_config	DNS Record config	list(object({ root_zone = string name = string type = string ttl = string records = list(string) }))	[]	no
regex_replace_chars	Terraform regular expression (regex) string. Characters matching the regex will be removed from the ID elements. If not set, "/[^a-zA-Z0-9-]/" is used to remove all characters other than hyphens, letters and digits.	string	null	no
region	AWS Region	string	n/a	yes
request_acm_certificate	Whether or not to request an ACM certificate for each domain	bool	false	no
stage	ID element. Usually used to indicate role, e.g. 'prod', 'staging', 'source', 'build', 'test', 'deploy', 'release'	string	null	no
tags	Additional tags (e.g. {'BusinessUnit': 'XYZ'}). Neither the tag keys nor the tag values will be modified by this module.	map(string)	{}	no
tenant	ID element _(Rarely used, not included by default)_. A customer identifier, indicating who this instance of a resource is for	string	null	no

Outputs

Name	Description
acms	ACM certificates for domains
zones	DNS zones

References

• cloudposse/terraform-aws-components - Cloud Posse's upstream component

Tip

👽 Use Atmos with Terraform

Cloud Posse uses atmos to easily orchestrate multiple environments using Terraform.
Works with Github Actions, Atlantis, or Spacelift.

Watch demo of using Atmos with Terraform

Example of running atmos to manage infrastructure from our Quick Start tutorial.

Related Projects

Check out these related projects.

• Cloud Posse Terraform Modules - Our collection of reusable Terraform modules used by our reference architectures.
• Atmos - Atmos is like docker-compose but for your infrastructure

Tip

Use Terraform Reference Architectures for AWS

Use Cloud Posse's ready-to-go terraform architecture blueprints for AWS to get up and running quickly.

✅ We build it together with your team.
✅ Your team owns everything.
✅ 100% Open Source and backed by fanatical support.

📚 Learn More

Cloud Posse is the leading DevOps Accelerator for funded startups and enterprises.

Your team can operate like a pro today.

Ensure that your team succeeds by using Cloud Posse's proven process and turnkey blueprints. Plus, we stick around until you succeed.

Day-0: Your Foundation for Success

• Reference Architecture. You'll get everything you need from the ground up built using 100% infrastructure as code.
• Deployment Strategy. Adopt a proven deployment strategy with GitHub Actions, enabling automated, repeatable, and reliable software releases.
• Site Reliability Engineering. Gain total visibility into your applications and services with Datadog, ensuring high availability and performance.
• Security Baseline. Establish a secure environment from the start, with built-in governance, accountability, and comprehensive audit logs, safeguarding your operations.
• GitOps. Empower your team to manage infrastructure changes confidently and efficiently through Pull Requests, leveraging the full power of GitHub Actions.

Day-2: Your Operational Mastery

• Training. Equip your team with the knowledge and skills to confidently manage the infrastructure, ensuring long-term success and self-sufficiency.
• Support. Benefit from a seamless communication over Slack with our experts, ensuring you have the support you need, whenever you need it.
• Troubleshooting. Access expert assistance to quickly resolve any operational challenges, minimizing downtime and maintaining business continuity.
• Code Reviews. Enhance your team’s code quality with our expert feedback, fostering continuous improvement and collaboration.
• Bug Fixes. Rely on our team to troubleshoot and resolve any issues, ensuring your systems run smoothly.
• Migration Assistance. Accelerate your migration process with our dedicated support, minimizing disruption and speeding up time-to-value.
• Customer Workshops. Engage with our team in weekly workshops, gaining insights and strategies to continuously improve and innovate.

✨ Contributing

This project is under active development, and we encourage contributions from our community.

Many thanks to our outstanding contributors:

For 🐛 bug reports & feature requests, please use the issue tracker.

In general, PRs are welcome. We follow the typical "fork-and-pull" Git workflow.

1. Review our Code of Conduct and Contributor Guidelines.
2. Fork the repo on GitHub
3. Clone the project to your own machine
4. Commit changes to your own branch
5. Push your work back up to your fork
6. Submit a Pull Request so that we can review your changes

NOTE: Be sure to merge the latest changes from "upstream" before making a pull request!

🌎 Slack Community

Join our Open Source Community on Slack. It's FREE for everyone! Our "SweetOps" community is where you get to talk with others who share a similar vision for how to rollout and manage infrastructure. This is the best place to talk shop, ask questions, solicit feedback, and work together as a community to build totally sweet infrastructure.

📰 Newsletter

Sign up for our newsletter and join 3,000+ DevOps engineers, CTOs, and founders who get insider access to the latest DevOps trends, so you can always stay in the know. Dropped straight into your Inbox every week — and usually a 5-minute read.

📆 Office Hours

Join us every Wednesday via Zoom for your weekly dose of insider DevOps trends, AWS news and Terraform insights, all sourced from our SweetOps community, plus a live Q&A that you can’t find anywhere else. It's FREE for everyone!

License

Preamble to the Apache License, Version 2.0

Licensed to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) under one
or more contributor license agreements.  See the NOTICE file
distributed with this work for additional information
regarding copyright ownership.  The ASF licenses this file
to you under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the
"License"); you may not use this file except in compliance
with the License.  You may obtain a copy of the License at

  https://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0

Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing,
software distributed under the License is distributed on an
"AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY
KIND, either express or implied.  See the License for the
specific language governing permissions and limitations
under the License.

Trademarks

All other trademarks referenced herein are the property of their respective owners.

---

Copyright © 2017-2024 Cloud Posse, LLC