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Is it possible to create an Alias record in Route 53 to a resource in another AWS account?

Use Case:

I have 2 AWS accounts. My domain is configured with a hosted zone in account A and I have an ELB in account B. I want to create a record to my ELB in account B for my domain's zone apex - which has to be configured in account A.

Does anyone know how I can get around this? I know I can go through billing support to have the domain transferred to account B but I would prefer not to do this. Also, it is not viable for me to migrate the resources from account B to account A.

mickzer
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    Why do you believe you have to "go through billing support to have the domain transferred to account B?" You could simply create a hosted zone with the same domain name in account B and point the name server records to it, keeping the registration itself in account A (assuming Route 53 is also your registrar). You can't do cross-account aliases. – Michael - sqlbot Mar 11 '16 at 03:44
  • I'm not sure that this is possible. However I did not try it. Going through billing to get the domain transferred is documented. I found a solution, you can in fact create an Alias record to a resource in another account. See my answer :) – mickzer Mar 11 '16 at 22:32

4 Answers4

74

So I've found the solution. You can in fact create an Alias record to a resource in another account.

The answer is in the documentation although it's description is a little vague in my opinion. See here under the ELB heading.

If you used different accounts to create your Amazon Route 53 hosted zone and your load balancer – Enter the value that you got in the procedure Getting the DNS Name for an ELB Load Balancer.

As a result, here's what I did:

  1. Copied my ELB DNS name from account B
  2. In account A, I created an Alias record for my zone apex (type: IPv4) and I simply pasted in the DNS name into the text field.

I saved the record and it worked straight away.

After you paste in your ELB's DNS name, you'll notice that the Alias Hosted Zone ID matches the Hosted Zone ID in your ELB's description tab.

mickzer
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    Who knew? That's really a bit of a surprise but hey, you found it. +1 – Michael - sqlbot Mar 11 '16 at 23:53
  • Yes, aliasing to AWS resources in other accounts is supported, one just has to paste manually a proper resource DNS name, like an ELB URL in this case. Aliasing to Hosted Zone records, though, is only supported within the same account. – Evgeny Goldin Mar 13 '16 at 05:25
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    Hey, I followed the same procedure but it does not work here. Is there anything else to be kept in mind while creating it. – Nayan Srivastava Aug 21 '17 at 05:37
  • Yes, does work for me too. Guess this is outdated. – Garry Kevin Aug 17 '21 at 08:45
  • it really works, just make sure to paste correct DNS. I accidently used global accelerator's DNS instead of load balancer's and it didn't worked at first :) – Lukas Liesis Oct 09 '22 at 18:23
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I can confirm this is still working, it's just the docs and UX of the portal are terrible.

I wanted to create a CNAME to an ALB at the apex (root) of my hosted zone; this isn't allowed so using an Alias A record instead. My ALB is in a different account, so the UI makes you think you can't do it... but you can.

You can create an Alias record to an ALB/ELB in another account by just pasting into the 'Route traffic to' box. Choose the region, then just dump the address into the box. Now this UI element makes you think it's a normal picklist and you can only pick from valid values... but it is secretly also a textbox allowing you to enter arbitrary text. Great UX guys

So enter your address and just click 'Create records'.

enter image description here

Rob Potter
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  • This worked for me too... My scenario is hooking up an API gateway custom domain in accountA when my R53 is in accountB. I added a record in accountB R53 to reference the cloudfront distribution. But because of how APIgateway works...the cloudfront distro is actually inside an internal AWS account. not my accountA. **sigh** just another day in AWS :) – Quincy Mar 15 '22 at 20:13
  • you would have thought that with all that money and talent Amazon could solve some of these UX issues... but I guess they're too busy churning out dark patterns on amazon.com to trick the world into subscribing to Prime... – Rob Potter Aug 23 '22 at 14:38
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Now AWS updated the Alias records info and it is much more clear, basically you add the DNS entry for the resource in the alias field.

https://docs.aws.amazon.com/Route53/latest/DeveloperGuide/resource-record-sets-values-alias.html

Fernando Schubert
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For those who're looking for why it doesn't work after you followed the procedure:

that is probably that you have another domain in the other account, in this case, don't forget to add a listener rule to the target ELB.

Xun Ren
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