This content originally appeared on DEV Community and was authored by Seth Keddy
Why You Should Back Up Your DNS Settings No Matter What Your Role Is as fast as you can.
Backing up your DNS settings is one of the most overlooked but critical steps in protecting your online presence. DNS — Domain Name System — is essentially the blueprint of how your domain connects to websites, email servers, APIs, and other internet services. If your DNS configuration is lost or corrupted, everything tied to that domain can fail instantly. Emails stop delivering, websites go offline, APIs break, and third-party integrations can fail. The result is downtime that can last hours or even days if you don’t have an accurate backup.
The risk isn’t limited to IT or sysadmins. Anyone who manages a domain — marketers, developers, small business owners, or executives — relies on DNS every day. Human errors, accidental deletions, malicious activity, or even a misconfigured provider update can disrupt services. Without a backup, recreating DNS settings from memory is nearly impossible and extremely error-prone. Even a small misconfiguration in TTLs, MX records, or CNAMEs can have cascading consequences.
Having a DNS backup transforms this risk. With a proper backup, you can restore your records exactly as they were in minutes instead of scrambling to piece them together under pressure. It allows for testing changes safely, rolling back quickly if something breaks, and ensuring business continuity. In short, DNS backups aren’t just a technical nicety — they’re a core part of operational resilience. Every role that touches your domain benefits from knowing that your DNS configuration is safe, versioned, and recoverable at any time.
Here’s a list of 10 roles where backing up DNS should be one of the first tasks on the job:
- System Administrator — Manages the organization’s IT infrastructure and often handles DNS directly.
- Network Engineer — Responsible for connectivity and routing, DNS is critical to ensure network services work.
- DevOps Engineer — Deploys applications and services that rely on DNS; any change can break deployments.
- IT Manager — Oversees IT operations and needs to ensure DNS continuity for business-critical systems.
- Cloud Engineer — Works with AWS, Azure, or GCP; cloud resources often depend on correct DNS records.
- Web Developer / Web Operations — Manages website domains; broken DNS can take the website offline.
- Marketing Manager / Digital Marketing Specialist — Handles domain-driven campaigns, email systems, and analytics tracking.
- Email Administrator — Maintains MX records and SPF/DKIM settings; a DNS loss can stop email completely.
- Security Analyst / Cybersecurity Engineer — Protects against DNS hijacking or malicious changes; backups are part of incident response.
- Small Business Owner / Founder — Owns the domain and online services; a DNS outage directly impacts business continuity.
Most people ignore DNS until something breaks. Then it is all hands on deck trying to figure out why email is down, websites are unreachable, or a third party service stopped working. DNS is like plumbing — invisible when it works, catastrophic when it fails. The problem is, once DNS is gone, you cannot just guess your way back to a working state without the exact settings. And that is where a backup makes the difference between a five minute recovery and a multi day outage.
This applies to everyone, not just sysadmins or network engineers. If you run a website, manage email, work in IT, handle marketing domains, or even just own a business domain, your DNS settings are the blueprint that connects your online presence to the world. Without them, your brand, your communications, and your services can vanish from the internet in seconds.
Lets look at this from as if you had AWS and you need to do backups as a dev.
1. Manual Export from AWS Route 53
AWS Route 53 stores DNS zones as “Hosted Zones.” You can export them using the AWS CLI or SDKs.
AWS CLI Example:
List all hosted zones
aws route53 list-hosted-zones
Get records for a specific hosted zone
aws route53 list-resource-record-sets \
--hosted-zone-id Z123456789ABCDEF > mydomain-dns-backup.json
What this does:
The first command lists all your hosted zones with their IDs.
The second exports all DNS records for the zone to a JSON file.
Store that JSON somewhere safe — it is enough to recreate the zone.
Restore Example:
aws route53 change-resource-record-sets \
--hosted-zone-id Z123456789ABCDEF \
--change-batch file://mydomain-dns-backup.json
2. Screenshots of DNS Records
This sounds crude, but AWS lets you dump records into a readable table that you can screenshot or print to PDF.
AWS CLI Quick Export Table:
aws route53 list-resource-record-sets \
--hosted-zone-id Z123456789ABCDEF \
--query "ResourceRecordSets[*].{Name:Name,Type:Type,TTL:TTL,Values:ResourceRecords[*].Value}" \
--output table
Why this works:
The table output is human-readable and includes all Name, Type, TTL, and Value entries. Take a screenshot or print to PDF. Not ideal for restoring fast, but better than nothing.
3. Infrastructure as Code (IaC)
If you use Terraform, you can store DNS in .tf files so you always have a version-controlled backup.
Terraform Example for Route 53:
resource "aws_route53_record" "www" {
zone_id = "Z123456789ABCDEF"
name = "www.mydomain.com"
type = "A"
ttl = 300
records = ["203.0.113.25"]
}
Backing up with Terraform:
terraform init
terraform import aws_route53_record.www Z123456789ABCDEF_www_A
terraform state pull > dns-backup.tfstate
Why this works:
Your DNS is now code. It is stored in Git, reviewed with pull requests, and easy to restore by running terraform apply.
4. Third Party DNS Backup Service
Even with AWS, you can use automation to pull DNS records on a schedule and store them in S3 for disaster recovery.
Python + Boto3 Example:
import boto3, json, datetime
route53 = boto3.client("route53")
s3 = boto3.client("s3")
zone_id = "Z123456789ABCDEF"
bucket_name = "my-dns-backups"
records = route53.list_resource_record_sets(HostedZoneId=zone_id)
filename = f"dns-backup-{datetime.date.today()}.json"
s3.put_object(
Bucket=bucket_name,
Key=filename,
Body=json.dumps(records, indent=2)
)
print(f"Backup saved to s3://{bucket_name}/{filename}")
Why this works:
Run it as a Lambda on a daily or weekly schedule, and you always have a current DNS backup without manual work.
The Problem With All of These
They all require either consistent manual effort, extra cost, or extra complexity. And when an outage happens, every second counts. The last thing you want is to be hunting for a backup or trying to remember the exact TTL of a record you set two years ago.
How dnsredo.com Solves This in 30 Seconds
dnsredo.com makes DNS backup and restore instant. You paste in your domain, it pulls and stores every record, and you can restore or share those settings at any time. No manual exports, no forgotten updates, no complex scripting. It works even if your DNS provider is down and it manages domains without needing API access. Whether you handle one domain or hundreds, it takes less than a minute to get a full backup that is ready to restore when things go wrong.
Your DNS is the foundation of everything you run online. Back it up before you need it.
I have other tools love and in dev, like aiemailbots.com.
This content originally appeared on DEV Community and was authored by Seth Keddy
Seth Keddy | Sciencx (2025-08-14T14:38:08+00:00) Backup your DNS in 30 sec. Retrieved from https://www.scien.cx/2025/08/14/backup-your-dns-in-30-sec/
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