This document outlines the DNS configuration options available in StreamNative BYOC, including how to set up a custom domain for use in a BYOC (Bring Your Own Cloud) deployment.

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Domain options

StreamNative BYOC offers two domain configurations: Custom Domains and StreamNative Managed Domains.
  • Custom Domains: You delegate a DNS zone to the AWS account used for BYOC deployment. All service endpoints are created under this domain.
  • StreamNative Managed Domains: StreamNative uses a domain within the snio.cloud domain, assigning a subzone specific to your cloud account.
For both types of domains, StreamNative utilizes the Kubernetes services like external-dns and cert-manager to managed DNS settings and TLS certificates. Below is a diagram illustrating the domain options in BYOC: image of BYOC AWS DNS
  • The diagram uses sncloud.<custom_domain> as an example of a custom domain.
  • You decide the domain name to delegate to StreamNative.

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Custom domains

With a custom domain, DNS names and TLS certificates for StreamNative clusters reside under a domain that you control. StreamNative requires a dedicated AWS Route53 zone for these domains to ensure that only necessary DNS records are modified. This allows AWS policies to be restricted specifically to this zone. This zone needs to be public to enable the generation of TLS certificates from Let’s Encrypt.

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StreamNative managed domains

For managed domains, StreamNative sets up and manages a Route53 zone in your AWS account under the snio.cloud domain, based on your organization ID (e.g., o-12345.snio.cloud). StreamNative then delegates management of this subdomain.
Due to AWS IAM limitations, when using StreamNative-managed domains, the AWS Access Module must first be provisioned with the route53 zone argument set as a wildcard (*). Once the zone is created and its ID is known, it can be restricted to that specific zone ID.

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Create a zone for a custom domain

StreamNative requires a dedicated Route53 zone. This section explains how to delegate a subzone from an existing domain, assuming you are using Route53 as your DNS provider. For details about how to delegate a subzone, see your DNS provider docs.

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Create a subzone via delegation

The typical approach is to create a subdomain and delegate it from the parent domain.
  • If your parent domain is on Route53, refer to the Route53 documentation.
  • If your parent domain is not on Route53, follow the general instructions in this AWS document.

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Register a new domain

If you prefer to register a new domain through Route53, consult the AWS documentation.

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Validate the zone

After creating and delegating the zone, it’s crucial to validate it. Command line tools, such as dig, allow for directly querying DNS records and ensuring that the NS records have propagated. This example assumes that you have created a subzone sncloud.myco.com, and that had NS records from route53 of:
  • ns-1654.awsdns-14.co.uk.
  • ns-1513.awsdns-61.org.
  • ns-449.awsdns-56.com.
  • ns-755.awsdns-30.net.
After creating the NS record from the parent domain, the dig NS sncloud.myco.com should return a response like: 
$ dig NS sncloud.myco.com

; <<>> DiG 9.18.1-1ubuntu1.3-Ubuntu <<>> NS sncloud.myco.com
;; global options: +cmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 41380
;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 4, AUTHORITY: 0, ADDITIONAL: 9

;; OPT PSEUDOSECTION:
; EDNS: version: 0, flags:; udp: 65494
;; QUESTION SECTION:
;sncloud.myco.com.		IN	NS

;; ANSWER SECTION:
sncloud.myco.com.	172800	IN	NS	ns-449.awsdns-56.com.
sncloud.myco.com.	172800	IN	NS	ns-755.awsdns-30.net.
sncloud.myco.com.	172800	IN	NS	ns-1513.awsdns-61.org.
sncloud.myco.com.	172800	IN	NS	ns-1654.awsdns-14.co.uk.

;; Query time: 251 msec
;; SERVER: 127.0.0.53#53(127.0.0.53) (UDP)
;; WHEN: Fri Feb 10 15:47:36 MST 2023
;; MSG SIZE  rcvd: 367
You can see that the ANSWER SECTION has 4 records that match the 4 NS records above. Another option is to use a tool like DNS NS Lookup Checker to lookup records. However, this may take longer to validate.

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Provide the zone ID

After you complete the validation, you can use the zone ID to configure hosted_zone_allowed_ids in StreamNative’s Vendor Access Module. The format of the ID should be similar to ZXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX (the letter Z followed by 21 digits or uppercase letters).