Multiple DNS Providers with Route 53

Question

Hi All,  
  
We are planning to change our DNS provider to Route 53, keeping the registrar as Godaddy (existing). As part of this process, we are planning to keep our old Name Servers (hosted on-prem) and add the new Route 53 Name Servers on Godaddy.   
  
Will this approach work? I read somewhere that all the Name Servers have to be present in all the zone files present in all the DNS providers. However, Route 53 doesn't support updating NS for the domain. How do we accomplish this?  
  
For eg: I want to keep 3 NS from old DNS provider and 3 NS records from Route 53. Do I need to update the NS records of old DNS provider in Route 53? How to do that?  
  
Any guidance would be much appreciated.  
  
Thanks,  
Shruti  
  
Edited by: Explorer14 on Mar 4, 2019 7:19 AM

Answer

We were able to take a soft cutover approach with zero downtime by adding the AWS NS at the bottom of the existing NS records in Godaddy. Gradually removing all old NS and adding rest of the AWS NS. AWS NS propagation was quicker than we expected. Query Logging is magical and a great tool to analyse the  DNS traffic.

Answer

Yes, this is definitely possible to do! :)  
  
In order to avoid running into strange DNS lookup issues, you will want to ensure that the configuration is consistent across the different name servers. It means that your on-prem name servers should have the exact same records as the Route 53 name servers since a DNS lookup request may end up being handled by any one of these.  
  
So the first step is to put all records you have on-prem into your Route 53 hosted zone as well. Also, Route 53 allows you to update the NS/SOA record sets to achieve your goal. For the NS records, you will want to have the combined list of name server addresses listed in both locations. The SOA record should match as well to ensure the configuration is fully consistent. Then it doesn't matter if a client ends up talking to an on-prem or Route 53 name server - they both have the same information.  
  
As GoDaddy is your domain registrar, you then add the Route 53 name servers to the existing set of name servers for your domain through their management interface. In case you've been using GoDaddy as your DNS provider in the past, note that this is (likely) configuration done outside of the actual DNS record management. This step is about modifying the set of name servers for the domain itself.

Multiple DNS Providers with Route 53

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