How to Import an AWS Route 53 Hosted Zone into Terraform

Import AWS Route 53 Hosted Zone with Terraback (recommended)

Terraback reverse-engineers your live infrastructure: it reads the Amazon Route 53 resource with read-only credentials, generates the HCL, and produces the exact import block. Two commands take you from a live AWS Route 53 Hosted Zone to managed Terraform.

terraback scan all aws --region us-east-1

terraback aws import --method bulk

The Terraform import block

Terraback emits a Terraform 1.5+ import block like the one below. Because the block lives in your configuration, the import is reviewable in a pull request and repeatable across environments.

import {
  to = aws_route53_zone.primary
  id = "Z1D633PJN98FT9"
}

Example aws_route53_zone configuration

Here is a realistic AWS Route 53 Hosted Zone block. Terraback generates a fuller version from your actual resource attributes; this is a minimal, valid starting point.

resource "aws_route53_zone" "primary" {
  name = "example.com"
}

Gotchas when importing a AWS Route 53 Hosted Zone

• Import by the zone ID (it starts with Z), not by the domain name.
• The default NS and SOA records are managed by AWS; other records import as separate aws_route53_record resources.
• Route 53 is global, so no region is required, but a private zone needs its associated VPC declared.

Doing it manually with terraform import

The native approach is to write the aws_route53_zone block by hand, then run terraform import aws_route53_zone.example <import-id> for every resource, one at a time. That works for a handful of resources, but it does not scale: you author all the HCL yourself and repeat the command for each item. Terraback generates the HCL and the import blocks for your whole account in one pass.

Import other AWS resources