Configuring Acquia Cloud Edge¶

Configuring your DNS¶

As part of Acquia Cloud Edge, your team has the option to configure your DNS using either of the following two methods:

1. Authoritative DNS – You move your DNS to Acquia Cloud Edge, and use Acquia Cloud Edge as your authoritative DNS service.

   Note

   Acquia recommends using the Authoritative DNS method to maximize the benefits provided by Acquia Cloud Edge.

2. Partial CNAME setup – You keep your DNS with your current DNS service and direct your traffic through Acquia Cloud Edge using a CNAME record.

   Domains using the Partial CNAME setup for Acquia Cloud Edge have the following limitations:

   • Distributed denial of service (DDoS) protection for attacks against DNS infrastructure is available only for the domain records you delegate to Acquia Cloud Edge.
   • Security and acceleration benefits are available only for the subdomain records (such as www.example.com) you delegate to Acquia Cloud Edge. Bare, or root, domains (such as example.com) cannot be protected or accelerated using Acquia Cloud Edge due to the DNS RFC (Request for Comment) 1033, which requires root domains to use A records instead of CNAMEs.

   To send traffic for your bare domain to Acquia Cloud Edge, add a redirect on your webserver using a .htaccess file to forward traffic to the subdomains you have proxied through Acquia Cloud Edge.

You must select and implement one of these methods to fully launch your domain with Acquia Cloud Edge. For more information about the Acquia Cloud Edge DNS options, see Acquia Academy

Setting up a domain for Acquia Cloud Edge¶

To set up your domain with your Acquia Cloud Edge subscription, you must complete a security measure to confirm your ownership of the domain you plan to manage. Acquia will provide your team a TXT record in the welcome email sent to you when you purchase Acquia Cloud Edge. The TXT record will look similar to this example:

Type: TXT
Name: cloudflare-verify.example.com
Content: 86XXXXXXX-1XXXXXXX

Add this TXT record to your current authoritative DNS for the domain. Acquia Cloud Edge will detect the record in your DNS, confirming your ownership of the domain. For security purposes, you cannot proceed with setting up your domain until you add this record and Acquia Cloud Edge verifies it.

If you are setting up multiple domains, you must add the respective TXT records provided in the welcome email to their respective domains. This TXT record is available on the Overview tab for each domain as a reference until it is added to your DNS record.

Testing Acquia Cloud Edge¶

You can test Acquia Cloud Edge by editing your /etc/hosts file to point your domain to the CloudFlare IP address for the domain. To test, complete the following steps:

1. Find the IP address of the subdomain to be routed through Acquia Cloud Edge using a command similar to the following:

   dig [domain_name].cdn.cloudflare.net
   

   where [domain_name] is your fully qualified domain name (FQDN).

   For example, if your domain name is test.example.com, the command would be:

   dig test.example.com.cdn.cloudflare.net
   

   The response will appear similar to these results:

   ; <<>> DiG 9.8.3-P1 <<>> test.example.com.cdn.cloudflare.net
   ;; global options: +cmd
   ;; Got answer:
   ;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 64242
   ;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 5, AUTHORITY: 0, ADDITIONAL: 0
   ;; QUESTION SECTION:
   ;test.example.com.cdn.cloudflare.net. IN A
   
   ;; ANSWER SECTION:
   test.example.com.cdn.cloudflare.net. 300 IN A 111.22.33.44
   test.example.com.cdn.cloudflare.net. 300 IN A 111.22.34.44
   test.example.com.cdn.cloudflare.net. 300 IN A 111.22.35.44
   test.example.com.cloudflare.net. 300 IN A 111.22.36.44
   test.example.com.cdn.cloudflare.net. 300 IN A 111.22.37.44
   

2. Select one of the IP addresses in the ANSWER SECTION of the dig response.

3. Ensure the Edge dashboard lists the subdomain record with an orange cloud. See What subdomains are appropriate for orange / gray clouds?.

4. Edit your /etc/hosts file to add a line based on the following format, using the IP address and your domain name:

   111.22.33.44 test.example.com
   

   For information about how to edit your /etc/hosts file, see Using an /etc/hosts file for custom domains during development.

5. Enter the domain name in your browser and examine the page response headers.

If Acquia Cloud Edge is functioning properly, your webpage’s response headers will include a cf-ray header.

Launching on Acquia Cloud Edge¶

You must thoroughly test your Acquia Cloud Edge configurations using the steps in the previous section before you schedule your launch.

Confirming traffic is going through Acquia Cloud Edge¶

After updating your DNS with Acquia Cloud Edge, you must test to confirm website requests are being sent through the Acquia Cloud Edge network. You can perform these tests in one of two ways:

• Using the browser address bar
  Enter www.example.com/cdn-cgi/trace in any browser, where www.example.com is the domain you are testing. The response will display details similar to the following:

  fl=4f64
  h=www.camilia.me
  ip=108.162.209.36
  ts=1437437272.84
  visit_scheme=http
  uag=Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_10_3) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/43.0.2357.134 Safari/537.36
  colo=SJC
  spdy=off
  

• Using the Claire plugin for Chrome
  The Claire plugin is a free download available from the Chrome web store.
  After you install the plugin, any website you access through the Edge network will cause the plugin to display an orange cloud icon in the Chrome address bar, indicating the request was processed by the Edge network.

  If you do not receive the expected results, the domain is not yet correctly configured for Acquia Cloud Edge. Confirm the DNS configurations have been made correctly.