Domain – Amazon AWS Ec2 instance, Elastic IP, Domain name from external domainseller, and Google Apps for Email

amazon ec2cname-recorddomainmappingspf

We are hosting our site on an Ec2 instance. Our Elastic IP is w.x.y.z and Public DNS is:
ec2-w-x-y-z.compute-1.amazonaws.com.

We've bought a domain name domainname.com from a lesser known domain-name-seller. We added an A-record pointing domainname.com to w.x.y.z. Will this work or do we need a CNAME record to point to the same too?

We wanted to use Google apps for emailing so adjusted the TXT/MX records according to the Google Apps ions to be able to send/recv email using @domainname.com email addresses.

Have we got it right, more important, we came across queries relating to email sent from ec2-w-x-y-z.compute-1.amazonaws.com (our users can send email from their onsite accounts) going to spam (rDNS not pointing to domainname.com but to ec2-w-x-y-z.compute-1.amazonaws.com). How can we fix this? We came across SPF records, do they provide a complete solution? We aren't sure as to how to use them. Can you help pls?

Incidentally figured 2 things:

1) CNAME points 1 domain name to another, domain to ip mapping happens in an A record, is this right? So an A record with domainname.com pointing to w.x.y.z does it for us.

2) openspf.org helped us create the TXT record we needed to add to our DNS system to reduce mail originating from either our Google-apps email (MX) or our site (A). Hopefully, rDNS pointing to ec2-w-x-y-z.compute-1.amazonaws.com won't result in much mail going to spam or will it?

Best Answer

1) You want to do what you have done and point domain.com to the IP. You can use a CNAME to point to domain.com if you want to add another hostname that points to the same place.

2) You have to make a request for Amazon to add a reverse DNS. You can do that here. It is probably worth doing but SPF should help for people who respect SPF, some people don't look at SPF.