Provide DNS Services for my domains and sub-domains
DNS is crucial - if it's down, my Azure web roles are down. I don't trust GoDaddy and Verisign with my production DNS, so I either need to have on-premise load balanced DNS servers or pay someone to do it. It would be great if Windows Azure took care of this for me.
Emmanuel Huna
shared this idea
16 comments
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Pete @ Philtinium
commented
We've been using dnsazure.com which has done a superb job of handling our A records dynamically for our site soundtracktoyour.com. Still it would be useful if as part of the Azure platform that these services were offered too.
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Jay
commented
This can be done in a VM role. But it should really be built into the azure services
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ChrisP
commented
This seems like a really obvious gap in the Azure service, which ought to be filled by the Azure product.
Until there is a proper Azure Dynamic DNS service in place for the musical IP/hostname issues, then the Azure platform can not possibly be considered to be an "enterprise" solution.
We already have a commercial/billing relationship and defined SLAs with Azure, so it makes absolutely no sense to add a 3rd party DDNS provider into the mix.
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shannonwhitley commented
If you never publish directly to Production and always swap from Staging, then the Production IP address doesn't change. Essentially, you have your static IP and you can use a standard DNS service provider. I use DNSMadeEasy and have had an excellent experience for the past couple of months with Azure.
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keyvan
commented
This is really necessary to host some ideas on Azure (other than allowing current professional sites to have more flexibility). It can enable a great potential for great sites and services.
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eudaimos
commented
This is an absolute must for serious solutions.
Currently DNS redirects are taking too long which is defeating the purpose of putting my solution in the cloud for scalability. Part of my app uses OpenAuth to sign users in so during the handshake, which is two back and forth requests, it's doing the DNS loop each time. -
Bart Verkoeijen
commented
Naked domains are an issue, because you would need the redirect to the subdomain (e.g. www) which is hosted elsewhere. Global offerings from MS that integrate well, offer easy configuration and one-stop solution would be appreciated.
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Anonymous
commented
DNS must be part of the Azure ecosystem last but not least because of integration with load balancing and for routing to closest servers. So, I am waiting for this...
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Emmanuel Huna
commented
Mario_Gandasegui - there are many 3rd party DNS systems out there, Amazon is just another one. If Microsoft provides the DNS services, it's much better - we already have a billing relationship, Azure support cannot blame it on DNS, etc...
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Mario_Gandasegui commented
Amazon just release an DNS Service.
http://aws.amazon.com/route53/ -
Carl Ryden commented
There is much more to this than just reliability. I use dnsmadeeasy.com - they have been extremely reliable and full featured. The problem is with supporting naked domains (e.g. cnn.com as opposed to www.cnn.com). I know the standard approach is to add a CNAME from www to xxx.cloudapp.net and then use your dns provider's http redirection to redirect the naked domain to www.cloudapp.net. This is not really a viable solution though:
1) while dnsmadeeasy does provide this redirection. It (and almost all others) can only redirect http traffic. It cannot redirect https traffic. If someone tries to access https://cnn.com under this scheme - it will just fail as the DNS provider does not have https redirect because they do not have the certificate.
2) performance - multiple DNS lookups are required along with a redirection
3) SEO/SL IsoStorage - we had to make a choice some time ago which site would be our primary domain so as not to split our links. Another thing that forced this issue was Silverlight Isolated Storage (it sees www.cnn.com as a different domain than cnn.com and hence you get two different isostorage locations). We chose the naked domain to be our primary one and we use (the wonderful) urlrewrite to 301 redirect from www to naked domain as it CAN redirect https traffic as well.
In the end I had to just put in place an A record that pointed the naked domain to the IP of the xxx.cloudapp.net. (I know that this is not recommended.) MS needs to either provide an integrated DNS service that allows the naked domain to map to the xxx.cloudapp.net OR make it easier/safer to add an A record (just add a checkbox that says "don't change my IP without my approval/notice"). For now I have a pingdom.com account monitoring my site for uptime/downtime so if my ip changes i will get a notice within a minute and I can update DNS manually.
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be789
commented
If Microsoft doesn't want to get into the nameserver business (and I don't blame them though Google just took the plunge), then they should at the very least have an official list of registrars which work well with Azure.
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Francisco Gutiérrez Domínguez commented
It's a common practice for WebApps to provide subdomain processing:
client1.domainApp.com,
client2.domainApp.com
...
clientN.domainApp.comAnd using the Rewrite Module pass parameters to pages, so you can change LOGOS or CSS files to fit the desires of your clients.
So a Redirect is not an option as we want to keep the subdomain visible. Also to say that having a subdomain tells your client that he is not another parameter, but a special client.
I've read a lot of threads (http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/windowsazure/thread/1ba9ec61-10b5-464f-8f34-bb7d5fa84697/) and just cannot get a clear picture of how to do this. I think that implementing DNS or giving us information of DNS providers and AZURE accepting any subdomains (having a wildcard) will do it.
¿Correct?
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JUSTPROUD
commented
+1 redirecting the root website is really a must have - elastic IP's will also be a help but with the cons (hosting apps in multiple geo-locations) providing DNS services seems to be the best alternative
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MakerOfThings77 commented
I compiled a list of alternate DNS hosts with different pricing options. The ones on top support "Anycasting" and several support Dynamic DNS. I haven't figured out which one works best with my Azure needs, but feel free to check them out yourself!
Akamai
Neustar / UltraDNS
ATT
Dynect
Netriplex
Verizon
Nettica
DnsMadeEasy
EasyDNS
No-IP
DNS Max
Dns Widge
DNSPark.com
WorldWideDNS.net
ZoneEdit -
ChrisLamont
commented
+1 More info on issues with common DNS Providers; especially when redirecting your root website to app.cloudapp.net
