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Good day everyone. Im going through my adventure in the cloud. I have this deal, never done it before so i don't know where to start, i would like some directions.

I have a client that currently they store their websites in GoDaddy (super sucks i know) and besides emails, he purchased some "email plans" (GoDaddy doesnt have a cPanel like normal servers) so webhosting is one thing and the emails are completely separate thing.

This is i want to achieve:

  • get the main domain of the company point to the EC2 instance that works like a charm.
  • keep the emails handled by godaddy. (i think Amazon's SES is not made for regular use)

Is this possible? Having the domain something.com point to EC2 and someone@something.com still receiving emails at godaddy?

I have one Elastic IP and i can access the sites just by typing the address in any browser.

What should i do?

It's as easy as changing the DNS for the domain to the elastic IP and wait a few hours? Does this affects the email delivering?

Thanks in advance. Any help, really aprecciate it.

Richard-MX
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Yes it is possible. See my answer here for an explanation. You'll basically be leaving all DNS records alone except for the records that correspond to the web site (A or CNAME).

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joeqwerty
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  • You are all over the place good joewerty :D. Im taking a look to your answer. – Richard-MX Sep 13 '12 at 22:59
  • LOL. I work from home most days so I have a lot of time to peruse the questions here. – joeqwerty Sep 13 '12 at 23:04
  • You work from home? i'll join the home-workers club because im working from home too. So, i've read your answer. If i understand everything, i just need to point the domain to the elastic ip, right? this is easy on typical cPanel Linux Apache combos, but Amazon/WindowsServer/IIS its another thing. – Richard-MX Sep 13 '12 at 23:08
  • I would personally recommend against pointing the naked domain to the web server. Just point a www A record to the web server. You'll do this in DNS zone for the domain in question. I'm assuming that GoDaddy hosts the DNS zone for the domain so you'll do it somewhere in the GoDaddy account management portal. – joeqwerty Sep 13 '12 at 23:15
  • Ok, found it. Under [ A (Host) ] i have three items: @, admin and web. @ item points to one ip that ends at 202 and admin & web point to another ip that ends in 170. Below, there's a [CNAME (Alias)] section with several items. Should i point the "web" item under A (Hosts) to the Elastic IP? Sorry for all these questions, im a total noob doing this things ... – Richard-MX Sep 13 '12 at 23:22
  • I've never really used their control panel so I'm assuming that what they have listed for web is actually an A or CNAME record for www. Try changing the one for web to the Elastic IP. If you provide the actual domain name I can run nslookup on it to give you more direction. Also, a screenshot of what you're seeing would be helpful. – joeqwerty Sep 13 '12 at 23:25
  • Do you have an email where i can send you that info? I don't think the boss will be happy with me showing screens in public :P – Richard-MX Sep 13 '12 at 23:33
  • I'm not sure how I could communicate that info to you privately. Knowing the domain name and seeing a screenshot of the control panel isn't any type of security risk (make sure that no user account information is shown). This is after all a public domain name and the info isn't anything more than one could figure out just by visiting the web site. – joeqwerty Sep 13 '12 at 23:37
  • See here http://imgur.com/EpSkd thanks – Richard-MX Sep 13 '12 at 23:47
  • It looks like they obfuscate the underlying DNS record meant for www by calling it web. That's my assumption, anyway. Go ahead and change the web entry to point to the Elastic IP. The TTL is one hour but if you flush the DNS cache on your client (and possibly your DNS server) you should get the record resolved to the new ip address immediately and will know if it's working or not. If you're using a Windows client you can use nslookup to test the www record and if you're using Linux you can use dig for the same. – joeqwerty Sep 13 '12 at 23:54
  • OK, im going to try it. Hope everything works good :) – Richard-MX Sep 13 '12 at 23:57
  • See here http://imgur.com/pBzbp the "www" its at CNAME's bottom and it points to @. Maybe i need to change @ to the elastic IP and not web? – Richard-MX Sep 14 '12 at 00:06
  • No, the @ symbol has special significance in DNS so don't change that. I would create an A record for www and delete the CNAME record. Or you could create an A record called "webserver" (or anything you like) and point the www CNAME record to it. – joeqwerty Sep 14 '12 at 00:10
  • Thanks, i will try it in a couple hours. I need to rest the eyes. I will let you now joe, you are so kind. Thanks. – Richard-MX Sep 14 '12 at 00:13
  • Glad to help. Make sure to post the final resolution so that we know you're all set. – joeqwerty Sep 14 '12 at 00:15
  • I've ended changing the @ value to elastic ip because it was not working as you said. Im waiting to see if this time works... Im starting hate IIS. Ill be back with final result. – Richard-MX Sep 14 '12 at 17:55
  • Sorry you're having trouble. At the end of the day, you want to have an A record for www that points to the ip address of the site or you want to have a CNAME record for www that points to an A record that points to the ip address of the site. Most DNS providers (GoDaddy, etc.) have their own custom interface for making DNS changes and it's often difficult to discern where in their interface you need to go to make the desired changes. – joeqwerty Sep 14 '12 at 18:03
  • Yup, setting up @ to point the new IP address do the trick and emails working good. Thanks for the help good joe. – Richard-MX Sep 17 '12 at 04:48