Partial CNAME setup using A record

Website, Application, Performance DNS & Network
1

I am using Cloudflare’s Partial CNAME setup guide https://developers.cloudflare.com/dns/zone-setups/partial-setup/setup/#add-dns-records, because I want to continue using Route53 as my authoritative DNS service, while routing traffic through Cloudflare for DDOS protection.

The guide linked above says in Step 4:
“Add a record in your [authoritative server] that points to {your-hostname}.cdn.cloudflare.net”

My current Route53 A record is: mydomain.org myPrefix.cloudfront.net

So should I update my Route53 A record to: mydomain.org myPrefix.cloudfront.net.cdn.cloudflare.net?

Yes, I’m aware that I’ll be sending traffic like this: user → cloudflare → cloufront → origin

Thank you!

4

No. The guide you linked gives a very clear example:

You should also be aware that Route53 doesn’t support CNAME flattening, so you cannot use mydomain.org, only subdomains like www.mydomain.org.

Replacing www.example.com with www.mydomain.org results in

www.mydomain.org CNAME www.mydomain.org.cdn.cloudflare.net

Also, I assume you have read that a Partial Setup is only available on the Business plan and higher?

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5

Thank you for your reply, but my question is specifically about A/Alias records.

Since my original post, I have successfully setup up the aforementioned Route53 → Cloudflare → cloudfront → origin for a specific subdomain, “xyz”.

Thus, requests to xyz.myDomain.org are flowing successfully end to end. However, I want to do the same for traffic going to my root domain, myDomain.org.

Yes, I’m on a Business plan.

6

Route53 does support an A record resolving to DNS records via the ‘Alias’ hack (at least, cloudfront records. I have not yet tried non-cloudfront records).

7

Update: I ended up continuing to use a Cloudfront origin for my A record. That origin redirects all traffic to www. I was able to cut over my www traffic to Cloudflare successfully. This issue is now close-able.

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