DNS allows for human-readable addresses

Learning objectives

• Details that we won’t dig into:
  • Describe the pieces of a fully qualified domain name (FQDN).
  • Explain why DNS changes can take a long time to propagate.
  • Use DNS records to route traffic to a domain.
• Configure a domain name for an AWS EC2.
  • Allocate an Elastic IP.
  • Configure DNS records to route traffic to an AWS EC2.

Allocate an Elastic IP

• (Make sure the server from Chapter 12 is running, with /rstudio & /palmer via nginx)
• Navigate to “EC2” > “Network & Security” > “Elastic IPs”
• “Allocate Elastic IP Address” (and click “Allocate”)
• “Actions” / “Associate Elastic IP Address”
  • Find the instance
• To clean up, you can do “Actions” / “Release Elastic IP Addresses”

Configure DNS Records

• (Register a domain)
• Find the “DNS” settings for that domain at your registrar
• Add or edit 3 records:
  • A * 12.345.678.90
  • A @ 12.345.678.90
  • CNAME www yourdomain.you

Reconfigure nginx

• sudo vim /etc/nginx/nginx.conf
• server_name ec2.whatever; to server_name yourdomain.you www.yourdomain.you;
• sudo systemctl restart nginx
• Visit http://yourdomain.you/rstudio and http://yourdomain.you/palmer/stats
  • Chrome will yell at you since https won’t work yet. See the next chapter!