Migrating a hosted zone to a different AWS account

To create the new hosted zone using a different account

1. Sign in to the AWS Management Console and open the Route 53 console at https://console.aws.amazon.com/route53/.

   Sign in with the account credentials for the account that you want to migrate the hosted zone to.

2. Create a hosted zone. For more information, see Creating a public hosted zone.

3. Make note of the hosted zone ID. In some cases, you'll need this information later in the process.

4. Log out of the Route 53 console.

1. Run the following command:

   aws route53 list-resource-record-sets --hosted-zone-id hosted-zone-id > path-to-output-file

   Note the following:

   • For hosted-zone-id, specify the ID of the old hosted zone that contains the records you want to migrate.

   • For path-to-output-file, specify the directory path and file name that you want to save the output in.

   • The > character sends the output to the specified file.

   • The AWS CLI automatically handles pagination for hosted zones that contain more than 100 records. For more information, see Using the AWS Command Line Interface's pagination options in the AWS Command Line Interface User Guide.

     If you use another programmatic method to list records, such as one of the AWS SDKs, you can get a maximum of 100 records per page of results. If the hosted zone contains more than 100 records, you must submit multiple requests to list all records.

   Make a copy of this output. After you create records in the new hosted zone, we recommend that you run the AWS CLI list-resource-record-sets command on the new hosted zone and compare the two outputs to ensure that all the records were created.

2. Edit the records that you want to migrate.

   Edit the exported file before you can use it with the change-resource-record-sets command. You can make these changes using the search and replace function in a text editor.

   Note

   The following steps describe manual editing using a text editor. Advanced users can automate these transformations using programmatic tools such as jq, Python, or other scripting languages.

   Open a copy of the file that you created in step 1 of this procedure that contains the records that you want to migrate, and make the following changes:

   • Replace the ResourceRecordSets element at the top of the file with Changes element.

   • Optional – add a Comment element.

   • Delete the lines related to the NS and SOA records of the hosted zone name. The new hosted zone already has those records.

   • For each record, add an Action and a ResourceRecordSets element, add opening and closing brackets ( { } ) as required to make the JSON code valid.

     Note

     You can use a JSON validator to verify that you have all the braces and brackets in the correct places. To find an online JSON validator, search "JSON validator" in your browser.

   • If the hosted zone contains any aliases that refer to other records in the same hosted zone, make the following changes:

     • Change the hosted zone ID to the ID of the new hosted zone.

       Important

       If the alias record is pointing to another resource, for example, a load balancer, do not change the hosted zone ID to the hosted zone ID of the domain. If you change the hosted zone ID accidentally, rollback the hosted zone ID to the hosted zone id of the resource itself, not the hosted zone ID of the domain. The resource hosted zone ID can be found in the AWS console where the resource was created.

     • Move the alias records to the bottom of the file. Route 53 must create the record that an alias record refers to before it can create the alias record.

       Important

       If one or more alias records refer to other alias records, the records that are the alias target must appear in the file before the referencing alias records. For example, if alias.example.com is the alias target for alias.alias.example.com, alias.example.com must appear first in the file.

     • Delete any alias records that route traffic to a traffic policy instance. Make note of the records so you can recreate them later.

   • If you migrated health checks in Step 3: (Optional) Migrate health checks, change the records to associate with the newly created health check IDs.

   The following example shows the edited version of records for a hosted zone for example.com. The red, italicized text is new:

   {
       "Comment": "string",
       "Changes": [
           {
               "Action": "CREATE",
               "ResourceRecordSet":{
                   "ResourceRecords": [
                       {
                           "Value": "192.0.2.4"
                       }, 
                       {
                           "Value": "192.0.2.5"
                       }, 
                       {
                           "Value": "192.0.2.6"
                       }
                   ], 
                   "Type": "A", 
                   "Name": "route53documentation.com.", 
                   "TTL": 300
               }
           },
           {
               "Action": "CREATE",
               "ResourceRecordSet":{
                   "AliasTarget": {
                       "HostedZoneId": "Z3BJ6K6RIION7M",
                       "EvaluateTargetHealth": false,
                       "DNSName": "s3-website-us-west-2.amazonaws.com."
                   },
                   "Type": "A",
                   "Name": "www.route53documentation.com."
               }
           }
       ]
   }

3. Split large files into smaller files

   If you have a lot of records or if you have records that have a lot of values (for example, a lot of IP addresses), you might need to split the file into smaller files. The max values are:

   • Each file can contain a maximum of 1,000 records.

   • The maximum combined length of the values in all Value elements is 32,000 bytes.

4. Create records in the new hosted zone

   Enter the following CLI:

   aws route53 change-resource-record-sets \
               --hosted-zone-id new-hosted-zone-id \
               --change-batch file://path-to-file-that-contains-records

   Specify the following values:

   • For new-hosted-zone-id, specify the ID of the new hosted zone.

   • For path-to-file-that-contains-records, specify the directory path and file name that you edited in the previous steps.

   If you deleted any alias records that route traffic to a traffic policy instance, recreate them using the Route 53 console. For more information, see Creating records by using the Amazon Route 53 console.