One-liner: Simple Routing + Health Checks = Multi-Value Routing

What It Does

Returns multiple IPs (up to 8) for a domain — but only the healthy ones.

Simple vs Multi-Value at a Glance

Feature Simple Routing Multi-Value Routing
Returns multiple IPs ✅ Yes ✅ Yes
Health checks ❌ No ✅ Yes
Returns dead servers ❌ Yes ✅ No
Max IPs returned All configured Up to 8 healthy
Client selection Random Random from healthy list

How It Works

Setup

You create one A record per server — all with the same domain name, each with a health check attached.

www.example.com → 192.0.2.2      ← Health Check A
www.example.com → 198.51.100.2   ← Health Check B
www.example.com → 203.0.113.2    ← Health Check C

Scenario 1 — All servers healthy

Route 53 returns all 3 IPs → client picks one randomly → connects successfully.

Scenario 2 — Server 2 is down

Route 53 detects failure → skips Server 2 → returns only 2 healthy IPs → client picks from those → no errors.

Step-by-Step Flow

  1. Configure — Create A records for each server; attach a health check to each.
  2. Monitor — Route 53 continuously polls every server's health.