DNS and CDN migration

Amazon Route 53 → Fastly

Move zones, record sets, names, and ttls, nameservers, delegation, and dnssec, traffic steering and health checks, proxy, cdn, origins, and host headers, tls certificates and security policy, caching, purge, and stale behavior, redirects, rewrites, edge logic, and headers, waf, bot, rate-limit, and access controls from Amazon Route 53 to Fastly with a reversible cutover, explicit exception ledger, and evidence-backed verification.

Typical timeline15–45 business days70–180 hours active work

Statusneeds review

Source profileAmazon Route 53 documentation reviewed 2026-07-20

Destination profileFastly documentation reviewed 2026-07-20

Documentation date2026-07-20

Review window2026-07-202026-10-20

Evidence2 sources

This route needs review.Use it as a planning baseline, then verify the dated sources and test with representative data before production.

Before you migrate

Should you make this move?

Both platforms have a case. Compare what you gain with what you give up before scheduling the cutover.

Current platform

Amazon Route 53

Reasons to stay

Highly available authoritative DNS integrates tightly with AWS health checks and routing policy
Declarative infrastructure makes environments reviewable, repeatable, and automatable

Reasons to leave

Advanced routing, resolver services, IAM, and per-query pricing create operational complexity
State identity, provider behavior, secrets, and plans must remain aligned to avoid destructive changes

New platform

Fastly

What gets better

A programmable high-performance CDN offers precise caching, instant purge, and strong edge controls
Declarative infrastructure makes environments reviewable, repeatable, and automatable

What gets worse

Service configuration, VCL or Compute logic, security products, and contracts require specialist operation
State identity, provider behavior, secrets, and plans must remain aligned to avoid destructive changes

Best of the move

Fastly: A programmable high-performance CDN offers precise caching, instant purge, and strong edge controls. This removes a major source-side concern: Advanced routing, resolver services, IAM, and per-query pricing create operational complexity.

Worst of the move

What you lose: Highly available authoritative DNS integrates tightly with AWS health checks and routing policy. What you inherit: Service configuration, VCL or Compute logic, security products, and contracts require specialist operation.

Jump to a section

01At a glance

Know the shape of the move.

Transfer outcome10 features audited

Clean0

Partial1

Manual8

Lost1

Mapping route8 of 9 fields have a destination path

SourceAmazon Route 539 mapped fields

Automatic0

Transform1

Manual7

Unsupported1

DestinationFastly8 supported paths

This timeline assumes

Up to 1,000 zones, 100,000 records, 500 edge rules, and 10 Tbps of peak traffic
Administrators control both Amazon Route 53 and Fastly, including billing, identity, APIs, integrations, and export permissions.
Amazon Route 53 remains intact and recoverable until Fastly completes one representative operating cycle.
A production-shaped pilot includes every object type, access class, edge case, and failure path.
The migration team preserves stable source identifiers and records durable evidence for every blocking check.

02What transfers

What survives the move.

“Partial” and “manual” are not footnotes. They are work that must be scheduled and verified.

Item	Outcome	Impact	What happens	Mitigation
Zones, record sets, names, and TTLs	partial	critical	Zone-file support, aliases, apex behavior, routing records, comments, and TTL limits differ. A successful bulk job therefore does not prove semantic parity between Amazon Route 53 and Fastly.	Map zones, record sets, names, and ttls explicitly, pilot every feature class, and reconcile accepted, changed, rejected, and excluded items.
Nameservers, delegation, and DNSSEC	manual	critical	Registrar delegation, DS records, signing keys, propagation, and negative caching require staged change. A successful bulk job therefore does not prove semantic parity between Amazon Route 53 and Fastly.	Inventory and rebuild nameservers, delegation, and dnssec, then test normal, edge, failure, and rollback behavior.
Traffic steering and health checks	manual	critical	Weighted, latency, geographic, failover, load-balancing, and health-check semantics differ. A successful bulk job therefore does not prove semantic parity between Amazon Route 53 and Fastly.	Inventory and rebuild traffic steering and health checks, then test normal, edge, failure, and rollback behavior.
Proxy, CDN, origins, and host headers	manual	critical	Proxy modes, shielding, origin selection, SNI, host headers, and connection policy require reconstruction. A successful bulk job therefore does not prove semantic parity between Amazon Route 53 and Fastly.	Inventory and rebuild proxy, cdn, origins, and host headers, then test normal, edge, failure, and rollback behavior.
TLS certificates and security policy	manual	critical	Certificate issuance, custom keys, cipher policy, minimum versions, mTLS, and renewal ownership change. A successful bulk job therefore does not prove semantic parity between Amazon Route 53 and Fastly.	Inventory and rebuild tls certificates and security policy, then test normal, edge, failure, and rollback behavior.
Caching, purge, and stale behavior	manual	critical	Cache keys, TTL precedence, stale controls, tags, surrogate keys, and purge APIs differ. A successful bulk job therefore does not prove semantic parity between Amazon Route 53 and Fastly.	Inventory and rebuild caching, purge, and stale behavior, then test normal, edge, failure, and rollback behavior.
Redirects, rewrites, edge logic, and headers	manual	critical	Rule languages, execution order, limits, header changes, and edge compute are provider-specific. A successful bulk job therefore does not prove semantic parity between Amazon Route 53 and Fastly.	Inventory and rebuild redirects, rewrites, edge logic, and headers, then test normal, edge, failure, and rollback behavior.
WAF, bot, rate-limit, and access controls	manual	critical	Managed rules, expressions, IP lists, challenges, rate windows, and allowlists do not translate directly. A successful bulk job therefore does not prove semantic parity between Amazon Route 53 and Fastly.	Inventory and rebuild waf, bot, rate-limit, and access controls, then test normal, edge, failure, and rollback behavior.
Logs, analytics, and historical baselines	lost	high	DNS query, request, security, cache, and performance history remains provider-native. A successful bulk job therefore does not prove semantic parity between Amazon Route 53 and Fastly.	Archive logs, analytics, and historical baselines as dated source evidence and define the new destination baseline.
APIs, credentials, automation, and billing	manual	high	Resource IDs, tokens, Terraform providers, quotas, contracts, and cost models change. A successful bulk job therefore does not prove semantic parity between Amazon Route 53 and Fastly.	Inventory and rebuild apis, credentials, automation, and billing, then test normal, edge, failure, and rollback behavior.

03Field and feature mapping

Where each thing goes.

Source	Destination	Method	Notes
Amazon Route 53: Zones, record sets, names, and TTLs	Fastly: approved zones, record sets, names, and ttls representation	transform	Preserve source IDs, ownership, timestamps, access intent, and an explicit exception status for zones, record sets, names, and ttls.
Amazon Route 53: Nameservers, delegation, and DNSSEC	Fastly: approved nameservers, delegation, and dnssec representation	manual	Preserve source IDs, ownership, timestamps, access intent, and an explicit exception status for nameservers, delegation, and dnssec.
Amazon Route 53: Traffic steering and health checks	Fastly: approved traffic steering and health checks representation	manual	Preserve source IDs, ownership, timestamps, access intent, and an explicit exception status for traffic steering and health checks.
Amazon Route 53: Proxy, CDN, origins, and host headers	Fastly: approved proxy, cdn, origins, and host headers representation	manual	Preserve source IDs, ownership, timestamps, access intent, and an explicit exception status for proxy, cdn, origins, and host headers.
Amazon Route 53: TLS certificates and security policy	Fastly: approved tls certificates and security policy representation	manual	Preserve source IDs, ownership, timestamps, access intent, and an explicit exception status for tls certificates and security policy.
Amazon Route 53: Caching, purge, and stale behavior	Fastly: approved caching, purge, and stale behavior representation	manual	Preserve source IDs, ownership, timestamps, access intent, and an explicit exception status for caching, purge, and stale behavior.
Amazon Route 53: Redirects, rewrites, edge logic, and headers	Fastly: approved redirects, rewrites, edge logic, and headers representation	manual	Preserve source IDs, ownership, timestamps, access intent, and an explicit exception status for redirects, rewrites, edge logic, and headers.
Amazon Route 53: WAF, bot, rate-limit, and access controls	Fastly: approved waf, bot, rate-limit, and access controls representation	manual	Preserve source IDs, ownership, timestamps, access intent, and an explicit exception status for waf, bot, rate-limit, and access controls.
Amazon Route 53: Logs, analytics, and historical baselines	No destination	unsupported	Retain immutable source evidence; do not manufacture destination-native history.

04Before you begin

Make the move recoverable.

Backup procedure

Create the source-of-truth backup

Preserve Amazon Route 53 data, configuration, access, and operating evidence before any destination write.

Export every available Amazon Route 53 object and binary in scope, including zones, record sets, names, and ttls, nameservers, delegation, and dnssec, traffic steering and health checks, proxy, cdn, origins, and host headers.
Capture configuration and runtime dependencies for tls certificates and security policy, caching, purge, and stale behavior, redirects, rewrites, edge logic, and headers, waf, bot, rate-limit, and access controls.
Record counts, sizes, owners, timestamps, access classes, financial totals where applicable, and known exceptions.
Hash immutable exports, record tool versions and commands, and transform working copies only.

Proof to capture: A signed manifest accounts for every scoped record class, configuration object, binary, count, total, exception, and hash.

Transformation · Version-controlled migration workbook, SQL, or typed transformation code

Identity, schema, and disposition registry

Preserve stable identity and make every mapping or exclusion reviewable.

Inventory source types, identifiers, owners, states, and access.
Define one approved destination representation or explicit archive decision.
Reject unmapped critical items and produce an exception ledger.

Proof to capture: Save the input, output, command or tool settings, warnings, and final item counts.

Transformation · Official APIs, provider importers, checksums, and reconciliation scripts

Dependency-ordered migration package

Load prerequisite identities and configuration before dependent records and runtime actions.

Normalize encoding, timestamps, identifiers, nulls, and destination limits.
Run a representative pilot and retain request, response, and rejection evidence.
Reconcile the final delta before enabling destination production writers.

Proof to capture: Save the input, output, command or tool settings, warnings, and final item counts.

05Handle with care

The things most likely to hurt.

These are operating limits. Treat every “Stop if” condition as a blocked migration, not a suggestion.

Import

A completed migration hides missing or altered zones, record sets, names, and ttls

criticalpossible likelihood

Headline counts look plausible while semantic, access, or relationship checks fail.

Consequence: The destination becomes authoritative with incomplete or misleading business data.
Mitigation: Reconcile by type, state, owner, access class, and representative record rather than total count alone.

Stop if: Any critical item lacks a verified destination, approved transformation, explicit exclusion, or recoverable archive.

Cutover

Amazon Route 53 and Fastly both perform production actions

criticalpossible likelihood

Users, schedules, webhooks, integrations, or traffic continue changing both systems.

Consequence: State diverges or customers receive duplicate, contradictory, or unsafe actions.
Mitigation: Freeze source writers and transfer one production owner at a time with an approved rollback.

Stop if: An unapproved source writer or destination duplicate action appears after the freeze.

Verification

Destination access or security is broader than approved

criticalpossible likelihood

A representative restricted user can read, change, export, or trigger an unauthorized item.

Consequence: Confidential, regulated, financial, or security-sensitive data is exposed or changed.
Mitigation: Apply least privilege before bulk loading and test every access class using ordinary identities.

Stop if: Any unauthorized read, write, export, administrative action, or secret access succeeds.

06Precise timeline

Do the work in this order.

Estimate forUp to 1,000 zones, 100,000 records, 500 edge rules, and 10 Tbps of peak traffic

Total elapsed15–45 business days

Active work70–180 hours

BufferAdd time for large Amazon Route 53 exports, destination rate limits, unsupported features, identity exceptions, regulated data, or a strict downtime objective.

Days 1–4Inventory and decisions2–4 days

Days 3–8Backup and reconcile2–5 days

Days 6–20Map, transform, and pilot5–12 days

Days 18–35Bulk load, final delta, and switch2–8 days

Days 25–45Observe and close7–14 days

1
Days 1–4 · inventory
Inventory and decisions
8–16 hours active2–4 days elapsedOwner, legal, security, and finance review waiting
- Inventory Amazon Route 53 data, configuration, identities, integrations, limits, and billing.
- Approve scope, owners, mappings, exclusions, acceptance thresholds, and rollback authority.
Depends on: Amazon Route 53 and Fastly administrator access
Stop / go checkpoint
Export?
Go when: Every critical item and production action has an owner and disposition.
Stop when: Authority, retention, billing, access, or system ownership is unclear.
2
Days 3–8 · backup
Backup and reconcile
8–20 hours active2–5 days elapsedProvider export processing waiting
- Create immutable data, configuration, binary, and audit exports.
- Reconcile source counts, totals, sizes, access classes, and hashes.
Depends on: Approved inventory and retention location
Stop / go checkpoint
Transform?
Go when: The signed source manifest and exports agree.
Stop when: Any critical dataset, binary, configuration, or recovery path is absent.
3
Days 6–20 · pilot
Map, transform, and pilot
25–70 hours active5–12 days elapsedDestination processing and owner review waiting
- Configure Fastly and transform a production-shaped pilot.
- Test normal records, every feature class, edge cases, permissions, failures, and rollback.
Depends on: Verified source backup and approved mapping registry
Stop / go checkpoint
Scale?
Go when: Every pilot mapping and blocking verification check passes.
Stop when: Any critical invariant, access boundary, or production action lacks a safe destination.
4
Days 18–35 · cutover
Bulk load, final delta, and switch
20–55 hours active2–8 days elapsedImports, propagation, indexing, or synchronization waiting
- Freeze production writes and automated actions in Amazon Route 53.
- Apply and reconcile the final delta, switch ownership to Fastly, and run all blocking checks.
Depends on: Passed pilot, stakeholder go decision, and rehearsed rollback
Stop / go checkpoint
Open production?
Go when: Fastly is the sole production owner and every critical exception is resolved.
Stop when: A source writer remains active, a blocking check fails, or rollback is unavailable.
5
Days 25–45 · observe
Observe and close
9–19 hours active7–14 days elapsedRepresentative operating-cycle evidence waiting
- Monitor correctness, access, failures, latency, delivery, cost, and user outcomes.
- Sign the verification report and close rollback only after stable evidence.
Depends on: Verified cutover
Stop / go checkpoint
Close rollback?
Go when: No trigger occurs during the approved observation period.
Stop when: Data, access, delivery, routing, cost, or business results regress.

07The point of change

Cut over with a way back.

Go live

Cutover

Make Fastly the only production system without losing the final Amazon Route 53 delta.

Recommended window: A low-volume weekday morning with platform, data, security, networking, finance, and business owners available.

Freeze user, integration, schedule, and API writes in Amazon Route 53.
Capture and reconcile the final source delta against the last verified checkpoint.
Apply the approved delta and configuration changes to Fastly.
Switch traffic, domains, integrations, credentials, automation, and user entry points in dependency order.
Run every blocking verification check and keep the source intact.

Proof to capture: Fastly alone owns production, totals reconcile, exceptions are signed, and every blocking check has durable evidence.

Return to safety

Rollback

Return production ownership to Amazon Route 53 without losing destination-era changes.

Deadline: Within seven days and before source data, plans, credentials, domains, keys, or retention settings are changed.

Stop new user, integration, schedule, and API writes in Fastly.
Restore prior Amazon Route 53 traffic, domains, credentials, automation, and integration ownership.
Export and classify the Fastly post-cutover delta.
Apply safe destination-era changes back to Amazon Route 53 without duplicating actions.
Run the same blocking checks against the restored source.

Proof to capture: Amazon Route 53 again owns production with current data and no duplicate destination action.

Rollback immediately when

Unexplained critical count, value, relationship, or checksum variance
Missing, corrupted, or exposed critical data
Duplicate production action or unresolved split-brain state
Failed access, security, delivery, routing, performance, or integration check
A critical feature has no safe destination replacement or rollback path

08Verification report

Prove the migration worked.

Every blocking check must pass. Capture the evidence before cleanup begins.

ID	Check	Method	Expected result	Evidence
`V-01`Blocking	Zones, record sets, names, and TTLs reconciliation	Compare source inventory, transformed output, destination results, and a stratified sample for zones, record sets, names, and ttls.	Every in-scope item is present, intentionally transformed, explicitly excluded, or retained in the signed source archive.	Zones, record sets, names, and TTLs ledger with counts, exceptions, sample IDs, and owner sign-off.
`V-02`Blocking	Nameservers, delegation, and DNSSEC reconciliation	Compare source inventory, transformed output, destination results, and a stratified sample for nameservers, delegation, and dnssec.	Every in-scope item is present, intentionally transformed, explicitly excluded, or retained in the signed source archive.	Nameservers, delegation, and DNSSEC ledger with counts, exceptions, sample IDs, and owner sign-off.
`V-03`Blocking	Traffic steering and health checks reconciliation	Compare source inventory, transformed output, destination results, and a stratified sample for traffic steering and health checks.	Every in-scope item is present, intentionally transformed, explicitly excluded, or retained in the signed source archive.	Traffic steering and health checks ledger with counts, exceptions, sample IDs, and owner sign-off.
`V-04`Blocking	Proxy, CDN, origins, and host headers reconciliation	Compare source inventory, transformed output, destination results, and a stratified sample for proxy, cdn, origins, and host headers.	Every in-scope item is present, intentionally transformed, explicitly excluded, or retained in the signed source archive.	Proxy, CDN, origins, and host headers ledger with counts, exceptions, sample IDs, and owner sign-off.
`V-05`Blocking	TLS certificates and security policy reconciliation	Compare source inventory, transformed output, destination results, and a stratified sample for tls certificates and security policy.	Every in-scope item is present, intentionally transformed, explicitly excluded, or retained in the signed source archive.	TLS certificates and security policy ledger with counts, exceptions, sample IDs, and owner sign-off.
`V-06`Blocking	Caching, purge, and stale behavior reconciliation	Compare source inventory, transformed output, destination results, and a stratified sample for caching, purge, and stale behavior.	Every in-scope item is present, intentionally transformed, explicitly excluded, or retained in the signed source archive.	Caching, purge, and stale behavior ledger with counts, exceptions, sample IDs, and owner sign-off.
`V-07`Blocking	Redirects, rewrites, edge logic, and headers reconciliation	Compare source inventory, transformed output, destination results, and a stratified sample for redirects, rewrites, edge logic, and headers.	Every in-scope item is present, intentionally transformed, explicitly excluded, or retained in the signed source archive.	Redirects, rewrites, edge logic, and headers ledger with counts, exceptions, sample IDs, and owner sign-off.
`V-08`Blocking	WAF, bot, rate-limit, and access controls reconciliation	Compare source inventory, transformed output, destination results, and a stratified sample for waf, bot, rate-limit, and access controls.	Every in-scope item is present, intentionally transformed, explicitly excluded, or retained in the signed source archive.	WAF, bot, rate-limit, and access controls ledger with counts, exceptions, sample IDs, and owner sign-off.

09Post-migration cleanup

Remove the scaffolding safely.

Safe after: One complete operating cycle, at least seven stable days, and owner sign-off on every blocking check and exception.

Create final Amazon Route 53 exports and archive verification, access, financial, and rollback evidence.
Revoke temporary credentials, API keys, webhooks, elevated roles, and migration network access.
Remove obsolete jobs, embeds, domains, integrations, collectors, routes, and DNS records.
Keep the source intact and read-only through the approved legal and operational retention window.
Cancel paid plans only after billing, legal, security, evidence, and recovery review.
Schedule the next Fastly backup, restore test, access review, and migration-playbook review.

Sources and evidence

Verify against the primary material.

Platform behavior changes. Check these sources and the review dates above before executing a production migration.

Amazon Route 53: official portability and migration documentationAccessed 2026-07-20
Fastly: official portability and migration documentationAccessed 2026-07-20

Know the shape of the move.

This timeline assumes

What survives the move.

Where each thing goes.

Make the move recoverable.

Create the source-of-truth backup

Identity, schema, and disposition registry

Dependency-ordered migration package

The things most likely to hurt.

A completed migration hides missing or altered zones, record sets, names, and ttls

Amazon Route 53 and Fastly both perform production actions

Destination access or security is broader than approved

Do the work in this order.

Inventory and decisions

Export?

Backup and reconcile

Transform?

Map, transform, and pilot

Scale?

Bulk load, final delta, and switch

Open production?

Observe and close

Close rollback?

Cut over with a way back.

Cutover

Rollback

Prove the migration worked.

Remove the scaffolding safely.

Verify against the primary material.