Azure – 1&1 hosting + azure cname + google apps mx

applicationazurecname-recorddomain-name-systemgoogle

I have a problem while hosting my website on azure :
I need to have an url mydomain.com, when deploying in azure it gives the url mydomain.cloudapp.net, so I do a cname record from mydomain.com to map with mydomain.cloudapp.net.

But I also have set up mx records for mydomain.com to google mail servers in order to have emails like myname@mydomain.com, and the cname record drops these mx records… Then I try to do the following :
1) keep mx records for mydomain.com and give up with the cname record here
2) create a subdomain www.mydomain.com and do a cname to map this subdomain to mydomain.cloudapp.net
3) do a redirect from mydomain.com to www.mydomain.com
then I could keep my pretty mails and have a pretty url for my azure website.
BUT it seems to not work with 1&1 hosting, I can't map www subdomain to a cname.
Does anyone know if there is a workaround, or if I'm doing wrong ?

Best Answer

The issue is that you cannot have a CNAME record for a domain that has other record types. It's for this reason that you should never have a CNAME record for your root domain (mydomain.com).

It seems like you have the right answers:

Keep the MX record for mydomain.com pointed at Google.
CNAME alias your www record to mydomain.cloudapp.net.
Create a redirect from mydomain.com to www.mydomain.com (via .htaccess rewrite-rule, or a basic HTML redirect page hosted on mydomain.com).

Related Solutions

Default CNAME when DNS quering

for inexistent.mydomain.com just add

*.mydomain.com. CNAME www.mydomain.com.

But you can't CNAME mydomain.com as it's root of your zone. See here: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/655235/is-root-domain-cname-to-other-domain-allowed-by-dns-rfc

But you can create A record for mydomain.com, and have *.mydomain.com. CNAME mydomain.com.. In this case everything that ends with .mydomain.com would resolve to same ip.

Set MX records on a CNAME domain (heroku app)

A CNAME record defines that one name is an alias of another name (the canonical name).

The implication of having an entire name be an alias is that it cannot also have records of its own, meaning you cannot have those MX records.
This is also why you cannot have a CNAME record at the zone apex (where you will always need at least SOA and NS records).

You may have to contact the service provider for a solution that does not involve the use of CNAME records.

One possibility that you could set up on your own would be to use a DNS service with an alias functionality that can add the specific record types that you need (A/AAAA records?) to your zone and keep those up to date based on a provided name. See services like Route53, DNSimple, DnsMadeEasy and probably many others that provide that kind of functionality.

Another possibility would be to have A/AAAA records that points to a web server that can do an HTTP redirect to a URL that does not involve this particular name (ie example.com -> www.example.com).

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Default CNAME when DNS quering

Set MX records on a CNAME domain (heroku app)

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