: Minimize downtime moving from godaddy to route 53 I have an A record in GoDaddy pointing to my web server. I want to move this now to Route 53. The last time I did this it took almost

@Sherry384

The first thing you want to do, is reduce the TTL (Time to Live) on your DNS records to be as small as acceptable. This will keep cached DNS servers from holding onto stale data for too long when you switch.

Next, I assume your web site is going to be moving to a new IP address. There is no reason switching the site to a new host IP address has to happen at the same time as your DNS changes. Load the site up at the new host, and in the old (current) provider's DNS, change the A record to the new IP. If you really require a hard switchover, at the old provider you can set up forwarding to the new IP.

In your new provider's DNS records (which are not yet authoritative) also set up the A record (and any others you need).

Now your site is (almost instantly) running at the new host.

However your DNS is still being handled by the old host, and as soon as you stop paying them, they might remove your entries. ;)

At this point you can submit to change the authoritative NameServers from the old host to the new host. It doesn't really matter when the change goes through (or if it's cached), because BOTH hosts' DNS servers are hosting up the same IP address information anyway.

After the change is complete, remember to raise the TTL back up to a reasonable time to lessen stress on the root DNS servers.

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