What Is a Private Zone?
A private zone contains information about how to map domain names used within VPCs such as ecs.com to private IP addresses such as 192.168.1.1. With private domain names, your ECSs can communicate with each other within the VPCs without having to connect to the Internet. You can also access cloud services, such as OBS and SMN, via the private DNS server.
Figure 1 shows the process how a private domain name is resolved.
When an ECS in the VPC requests a private domain name, the private DNS server directly returns a private IP address mapped to the domain name.
Private zones allow you to:
- Flexibly customize private domain names in your VPCs.
- Associate one or more multiple VPCs with one domain name.
- Use private DNS servers to prevent DNS spoofing and quickly respond to requests for accessing ECSs in VPCs as well as OBS and RDS resources.
You can use private domain names in the following scenarios:
Managing ECS Host Names
You can plan host names based on the locations, usages, and account information of ECSs, and map the host names to private IP addresses, helping you manage ECSs more easily.
For example, if you have deployed 20 ECSs in an AZ, 10 for website A and 10 for website B, you can plan their host names (private domain names) as follows:
- ECSs for website A: weba01.region1.az1.com – weba10.region1.az1.com
- ECSs for website B: webb01.region1.az1.com – webb10.region1.az1.com
After you configure the host names, you will be able to quickly determine the locations and usages of ECSs during routine management and maintenance.
See Configuring a Private Zone for detailed operations.
Replacing an ECS Without Service Interruption
As the number of Internet users is continuously increasing, a website application deployed only on one server can hardly handle concurrent requests during business spikes. A common practice is to deploy the application on multiple servers and distribute the load across servers.
These servers are in the same VPC and communicate with each other using private IP addresses that are coded into internal APIs called among ECSs. If one server is replaced in the system, its private IP address changes accordingly. As a result, you need to change this IP address in the APIs and re-publish the website. This poses challenges for system maintenance.
If you create a private zone for each server in the VPCs and map their host names to private IP addresses, they will be able to communicate using private domain names. When you replace any of the ECSs, you only need to change the IP address in record sets, instead of modifying the code.
Figure 2 shows a typical scenario of private zones.
ECSs and RDS instances are in the same VPC.
- ECS0: primary service node
- ECS1: public service interface
- RDS1: service database
- ECS2 and RDS2: backup service node and backup database
When ECS1 becomes faulty, the backup server ECS2 must work instead. However, if no private domain names are configured for the two ECSs, you need to change the private IP addresses in the code for ECS0. This will interrupt services, and you will need to publish the website again.
Now assume that you have configured private domain names for the ECSs and have included these domain names in the code. If ECS1 becomes faulty, you only need to change the DNS records to direct traffic to ECS2. Services are not interrupted, and you do not need to publish the website again.
Accessing Cloud Resources
Configure private domain names for ECSs so that they can access other cloud services, such as SMN and OBS, without connecting to the Internet.
When you create an ECS, note the following:
- If a public DNS server is configured for the subnet where the ECS resides and the VPC of this subnet has been associated with a private zone, requests to access cloud services will be routed over the Internet.
Figure 3 shows the process for resolving a domain name when an ECS accesses cloud services.
Requests are routed on the Internet, resulting in an increase in network latency.
- If a private DNS server is configured for the subnet, it directly processes the requests to access cloud resources.
When the ECS accesses these cloud services, the private DNS server returns their private IP addresses, instead of routing requests over the Internet. This reduces network latency and improves access speed. Steps 1 to 4 on the left of Figure 3 shows the process.
