# Creating health checks and configuring DNS failover

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This page was generated from content adapted from the [AWS Developer Guide](https://github.com/awsdocs/amazon-route53-docs.git)
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## How Route 53 determines whether a health check is healthy

* **Note**\
  Because Route 53 health checks monitor CloudWatch data streams instead of the state of CloudWatch alarms, you can't force the status of a health check to change by using the CloudWatch [SetAlarmState](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonCloudWatch/latest/APIReference/API_SetAlarmState.html) API operation.

## Creating, updating, and deleting health checks

* **Important**\
  If you're updating or deleting health checks that are associated with records, review the tasks in [Updating or deleting health checks when DNS failover is configured](https://github.com/kevinslin/aws-reference-notes/blob/main/services/amazon_route_53/health-checks-updating-deleting-tasks.md) before you proceed.


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