Using Route53 to Ping FE and Blacklist a DNS Endpoint

Overview

Route53 is a scalable Domain Name System (DNS) service managed by Amazon Web Services (AWS). One option available under Route53 is the ability to blacklist an IP in the DNS. Another is directly monitoring the SBC endpoint. The SBC can use Route53:

• As a DNS for both internal and external nodes
• To monitor the EC2 instance for reachability or health, and to update DNS records accordingly

The testing environment used the following setup:

Test setup

Configuration

1. Create a Hosted Zone:
   a. Navigate to Services→Networking & Content Delivery→Route53.
   b. Select Hosted zones from the left-side panel. A DNS name (example: "sonusnet.com") should be given.  For Public hosted zones, the DNS name should be registered.
   Hosted zones
   

    

2.  Create Record sets in the Hosted Zone. There are NS and SOA records created by default, these can be ignored if not used.
   a. Create a new record set.
   c. Each Record set can be given a prefix such as "test.sonusnet.com." 
   d. Type A or AAAA.
   e. Configure TTL (minimum of 3s).
   f. Add the IP address that maps to this name. (Corresponding address is returned by the DNS when the record is used for generating DNS response.)
   g. Select a routing policy (in this example, Failover – Primary and Secondary instance support with failure detection). Create two record sets with same name, one in primary mode of failover and other in secondary mode of failover. With primary, you must associate a health check (otherwise you cannot create a primary record set) because, on detection of this health check failure, the DNS returns the secondary value's data for this record set.
   For primary, associate the HFE-1's eth0 IP. For secondary, associate HFE-2's eth0 IP.
   Create Record Set - primary entry
   

   Create Record Set - secondary entry
   

3. For the primary node, selection of a Health Check is mandatory, while in the secondary node it is optional.

Health Check

Route 53 health checks let you track the health status of your resources, such as web servers or mail servers, and take action when an outage occurs. Route53 health check can monitor the EC2 instance for the reachablity or health in multiple ways. 

• Directly monitor the endpoint using TCP/HTTP.
• Check other health check parameters
• Cloud Watch Alarms
• Supports advanced checks using HTTPS and response analysis

Note that Health Check probes public IP addresses only.

Route53 can also monitor non-AWS endpoints for health (for a fee).

Creating a Health Check by Directly Monitoring the Endpoint Using TCP/HTTP

Monitoring can be setup using a simple HTTP port for the IP address of the instance. Health Checks can be done using HTTP/TCP. Detailed steps are as follows:

• Select a Create health check option:
  Create health check
  

   
  

• Configure the health check:
  • Enter a name for the health check.
  • Select what to monitor (here, the HFE endpoint).
  • Select a protocol (TCP/HTTP) and give the Elastic IP details of the machine (here, the HFE-1's eth1 IP).

Configure Health Check

• In Advanced configuration, change Request interval to 10 seconds, change Failure threshold to 2, and the health checker regions can be customized.

Request Interval specifies the time after which the next check for health is done.
Failure threshold specifies how many times a request is sent to the endpoint from the regions before a failure is confirmed.
Health checker regions specify the regions from where the requests to the endpoints to monitor its health are sent .

Advanced configuration

• Click Next to open the Create health check dialog, and then click Create health check:

Create health check

• After few minutes the health check must be successful in order for the route53 failover to work as expected. (The HFE eth1 IP provided in health check is tried for reachability from different regions selected). Also, the same health check must be selected for the primary record set created in failover mode in the Route53 configuration for record set.
  Health checkers
  

  Note

  • With TCP protocol and port "22",  there is no need to make any changes in the HFE except for updating the regions' IP in corresponding security group.
  • With TCP protocol and port "80", you must install "httpd" service on primary HFE (node where the health check is created)
  • With HTTP protocol and port "80", you must install "httpd" service on primary HFE and also, few changes in conf files that is mentioned in the next section.

Configurations on HFE (Node where the Route53 health check reaches)

1. Install 'httpd' service on the node.
   'httpd' service Installation

   [root@ip-172-31-20-153 ~]# yum install httpd -y
   Loaded plugins: priorities, update-motd, upgrade-helper
   Resolving Dependencies
   --> Running transaction check
   ---> Package httpd.x86_64 0:2.2.34-1.16.amzn1 will be installed
   --> Finished Dependency Resolution
   
   Dependencies Resolved
   
   =========================================================================================================================================
    Package                                Arch                     Version                             Repository                      Size
   =========================================================================================================================================
   Installing:
    httpd                                  x86_64                   2.2.34-1.16.amzn1                   amzn-updates                   1.2 M
   
   Transaction Summary
   ==========================================================================================================================================
   Install  1 Package
   
   Total download size: 1.2 M
   Installed size: 3.1 M
   Downloading packages:
   httpd-2.2.34-1.16.amzn1.x86_64.rpm                                                                                     | 1.2 MB  00:00:01    
   Running transaction check
   Running transaction test
   Transaction test succeeded
   Running transaction
     Installing : httpd-2.2.34-1.16.amzn1.x86_64                                                                                        1/1
     Verifying  : httpd-2.2.34-1.16.amzn1.x86_64                                                                                        1/1
   
   Installed:
     httpd.x86_64 0:2.2.34-1.16.amzn1                                                                                                                                                    
   
   Complete!
   [root@ip-172-31-20-153 ~]#

2. The entries for the health check regions needs to be added in SECURITY GROUP corresponding to the HFE.
   
   In this example, let us say 3 regions then the security group looks like : 
   
   
   

3. Bind the HFE eth1's IP for HTTP (IP interface for which the health check has been configured) and allow HTTP by doing the following on HFE-1: 

   1. Update the private IP of eth1 in /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf with port 80 and comment the part where just the port is allowed.

      Initial conf file :

      Before updating the conf file

      [root@ip-172-31-10-70 ~]# grep "Listen" /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf
      # Listen: Allows you to bind Apache to specific IP addresses and/or
      # Change this to Listen on specific IP addresses as shown below to
      #Listen 12.34.56.78:80
      Listen 80

      
      

      Updated conf file:

      After updating the conf file

      [root@ip-172-31-10-70 ~]# grep "Listen" /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf
      # Listen: Allows you to bind Apache to specific IP addresses and/or
      # Change this to Listen on specific IP addresses as shown below to
      Listen 172.31.10.210:80
      #Listen 80

   2. Replace the line which has "Options -Indexes" with  :

      Options Indexes SymLinksIfOwnerMatch FollowSymLinks

      in the files

      /etc/httpd/conf.d/welcome.conf

      Finding file names which has 'Options Indexes' or 'Options -Indexes'

      
      

      [root@ip-172-31-10-70 httpd]# sed -i 's/Options -Indexes/Options Indexes SymLinksIfOwnerMatch FollowSymLinks/g' /etc/httpd/conf.d/welcome.conf

4. Stop and start the httpd service

   'start' and 'stop' of HTTPD service

   [root@ip-172-31-10-70 ~]# service httpd stop
   Stopping httpd:                                            [  OK  ]
   [root@ip-172-31-10-70 ~]# service httpd start
   Starting httpd:                                            [  OK  ]
   [root@ip-172-31-10-70 ~]#

Related Links

http://docs.aws.amazon.com/Route53/latest/DeveloperGuide/dns-failover-configuring.html

http://docs.aws.amazon.com/Route53/latest/DeveloperGuide/dns-failover-configuring-options.html

• The UAC and UAS can be present in same or different availability zones but within the same VPC
• If the UAC and UAS are present in different availability zones than the SBC, then 'route' needs to be added in both i.e. SIP machine as well as the SBC, and the corresponding security groups must be properly configured  with corresponding entries.