I'm told that I can't make the root of a domain (example.com) a CNAME - I have to specify an IP. Given that you can't use an IP address to point at your Elastic Load Balancer, what's the best thing to do? Currently I do this: example.com - A record to elastic IP of first server- redirects to www.example.com www.example.com CNAME to hostname of load balancer If the first server is out of action, the redirect will fail. Is there a better way to approach this?