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I transferred a domain name from GoDaddy to Amazon Route53 but I'm not sure I performed the transfer properly, particularly regarding the nameservers.

My issue is that the domain name is not resolving. The A records should be pointing it to the web server, which I can tell is responding.

Browsing to the domain results in ERR_NAME_NOT_RESOLVED

The transfer was completed several hours ago, so propagation time could still be a factor, but I beginning to wonder.

There are NS and SOA records in the new hosted zone in Route53:

enter image description here

The whois still shows the old nameservers, looks like:

enter image description here

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  • It's hard to provide useful tips, let alone a solution, if you hide the domain name.
    – Tommiie
    Nov 26, 2018 at 19:49
  • What exactly did you do? And I agree, it is helpful to disclose the actual domain name.
    – Michael Hampton
    Nov 26, 2018 at 19:57
  • Right, OK the domain is pandastand.com
    – robbpriestley
    Nov 26, 2018 at 20:12
  • And what I did was initiate the transfer, followed instructions, issued approvals, etc. One thing I didn't do was transfer any nameserver records to a hosted zone in Route53 prior to initiating the transfer, as some instructions advised doing. My reasoning was that I wanted to use Amazon's nameservers and not the old GoDaddy nameservers. Freshen everything up, or that was the idea.
    – robbpriestley
    Nov 26, 2018 at 20:13

3 Answers 3

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There are two areas in question in Route 53.

You’ve referred to the “Hosted Zones” but you did not refer to the “Registered Domains” section. This can be seen in your screenshot.

When you transfer a domain, the nameserver settings are typically transferred as well. This prevents an outage on your website when the transfer takes place. However, I’m pretty sure GoDaddy is just stupid and deletes your DNS services as soon as the transfer completes, thus breaking your website until the nameserver settings are updated on the new registrar.

As Amazon is now your new registrar you will update the nameserver records in the “Registered Domains” section in Route 53. As Amazon is also your DNS host now, you will change the nameserver settings so that GoDaddy servers are removed and AWS servers are added.

  1. Click on “Registered Domains.”
  2. Choose the domain in question.
  3. Choose “Add / Edit Nameservers”

The process is discussed in more detail here: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/Route53/latest/DeveloperGuide/domain-name-servers-glue-records.html

Simply updating the Hosted Zone records is not enough. The domain’s nameserver settings need to be updated so that the rest of the world knows where to “find” your hosted zone records.

As mentioned previously, once the change is made, there is a TTL (Time To Live) that must expire before you can be confident the changes have propagated around the world.

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  • This answer is clearly-written with direct instructions. I feel bad because Kamil J below is likely trying to tell me this but I had difficulty with his language. These so-called "glue records" are new to me. I have transferred several domains into Route53 in the past and not had to change them. I'm not sure what's different about this transfer or why it went wrong. This answer doesn't say what to change the glue record to, but I think they should be the same as the NS records. Now I guess we need to wait for the old TTL to expire. Who knows how long, up to 48h. I will report back.
    – robbpriestley
    Nov 27, 2018 at 14:56
  • This is a clear answer. After 2 days of struggling, finally found a fix. Thanks
    – Jose Mhlanga
    Jul 17, 2022 at 6:47
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What I see the whois says

Registrar: Amazon Registrar, Inc.

so the change of registrar seems to be done correctly. Now using the management portal (web) at your registrar (Amazon) you need to instruct, where is located NS (name servers) for your domain. This records are stored (Amazon will push it up) in the name servers handling .com (top level domain) so out of your zone records. Here I can still see the GoDaddy nameservers and the most probably they delete the stuff related to your domain with domain transfer... You need to change it to Route53. That would explain ERR_NAME_NOT_RESOLVED.

dig +norecurse @a.gtld-servers.net pandastand.com

;; AUTHORITY SECTION:
pandastand.com.     172800  IN  NS  ns01.domaincontrol.com.
pandastand.com.     172800  IN  NS  ns02.domaincontrol.com.

;; ADDITIONAL SECTION:
ns01.domaincontrol.com. 172800  IN  AAAA    2603:5:2140::1
ns01.domaincontrol.com. 172800  IN  A   97.74.100.1
ns02.domaincontrol.com. 172800  IN  A   173.201.68.1
ns02.domaincontrol.com. 172800  IN  AAAA    2603:5:2240::1

This information is set separately to domain records (may and would be the same as what is set up in the zone records but if you know what are you doing and have reason for it it could be different). Search for domain detail or nameservers for the domain or whatever naming it will be. Definitely it will be other place than zone records. In your case it would be set to the same value - pointing to Route53's dns servers.

To have it in sync with information /screenshot/ from original request it would be:

ns-851.awsdns-42.net.
ns-1293.awsdns-33.org.
ns-387.awsdns-48.com.
ns-1978.awsdns-55.co.uk.
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  • Yes, if I understand you correctly, I do already have the NS records set to the new AWS versions. There is nowhere other than the hosted zone area to make these changes.
    – robbpriestley
    Nov 27, 2018 at 0:15
  • On the screenshot I see Registered domain under Domains. I would try to search there. These changes is really more related to domain. This infromation is handled by registrar even you manage the DNS zone on other then their service... Edit: I have found the link which may help... Amazon service docs.
    – Kamil J
    Nov 27, 2018 at 0:26
  • thanks, I am already caught up with that. in other words, already done.
    – robbpriestley
    Nov 27, 2018 at 0:48
  • Great to see it! Unfortunately I see TTL for the upper record to be 172800 (2 days) :-(. So far it has not be propragated but it may take a while... Please mark the question as answered once you will have it confirmed, that everything is already propagated / working for you... PS: In case you will try via your resolving DNS server it will cached current (wrong) value... Try it a little bit later ;-).
    – Kamil J
    Nov 27, 2018 at 1:06
  • If I understand you correctly, you think it may be a propagation issue. In other words it hasn't propagated yet.
    – robbpriestley
    Nov 27, 2018 at 1:10
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To resolve this issue, you simply need to update the default NS records at the GoDaddy end, remove the Godaddy default NameServers with the Route53 domain NameServers. https://kinsta.com/knowledgebase/godaddy-nameservers/

And once the changes are made, the propagation will start, and within a few hours, your site domain will be up and running.

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