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How to delete a Hostedzone

When to use this process

It is very unlikely that we will delete a hostedzone. In the first instance refer to Decommissioning Domains guide to determine in deletion is appropriate.

The most likley scenarios for deletion of a hostedzone would be: - removal of a hostedzone created by Operations Engineering for testing purposes that is no longer required - removal of a hostedzone following transfer of a domain to another Governemnt agency - a delegation to a hostedzone managed inside of MoJDSD is no longer required

We use OctoDNS to manage changes to DNS. At present OctoDNS cannot delete a whole Hostedzone, therefore this process exists to ensure that what is in DNS is aligned to what is in AWS Route53. This requires some manually steps that we should look to automate at a later time.

Steps to delete the Hostedzone

  1. You have consulted the Decommissioning Domains guide and you are satisfied that the scenario for deletion applies in this instance.

  2. Check the hostedzone .yaml file to identify any delegations from that zone. These will take the form of NS records for subdomains within that hostedzone e.g NS record for subdomain.example.justice.gov.uk in the example.justice.gov.uk hostedzone. If you have identified any delegations you will first need to establish if any of those are still active before progressing to the next steps. If any delegations are still required the hostedzone cannot be deleted.

  3. If the hostedzone to be deleted is a delegtion from within the MoJDSD account start by removing the relevant delegation NS record from the parent hostedzone. This change must be implemented via DNS. It can part of the same PR to delete the hostedzone in step 5.

  4. Delete the .yaml file related to the hostedzone to be deleted via DNS.

  5. Raise the PR relating to the removal of the .yaml file, including removal of any delegation DNS records identifed in step 3. Check the dry-run output to ensure that the expected changes will be made. If this is just the removal of the .yaml file there should be no changes.

  6. After the change has been applied successfully (i.e. no alerts or pipeline failures), access Route53 via the console and manually remove the hostedzone. You will be unable to delete the zone if it contains additional DNS records to the default NS and SOA records. Manually delete these DNS records first, and then delete the Hostedzone.

(service).gov.uk subdomains domains

In the extremely unlikely scenario that you need to delete one of these types of domain, there are some additional manual steps to complete deletionthat must be completed.

  1. Check if a domain is registered in BT DNS. If the domain is registered here you will need to submit an order via the BT DNS Portal to Cease registartion of the domain.

  2. Contact Cabinet Office Domain Team via email to confirm that the domain is being deleted.

This page was last reviewed on 10 October 2024. It needs to be reviewed again on 10 January 2025 by the page owner #operations-engineering-alerts .