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I've set up a distribution but I'm a bit confused about the purpose of the CNAME that can be set up in Cloudfront. Assuming my assigned Cloudfront domain is d27fwrff25jcfdafa.cloudfront.net I can assign the "nice" CNAME static.example.com using the AWS Management Console.
I don't understand why I'd want to do this though. Why wouldn't I just create the CNAME in my sites DNS records and point it directly at d27fwrff25jcfdafa.cloudfront.net instead of creating the CNAME in Cloudfront? This is what I've done and it works perfectly but I don't like not understanding stuff.
Alternatively if I only created the CNAME using the Management Console wouldn't I then need to set my nameservers to Amazons so the CNAME can be resolved correctly? I can't find any mention of that step in the documentation so I guess I must be missing something!
Thanks for any help, Paul.
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In CloudFront, an alternate domain name, also known as a CNAME, lets you use your own domain name (for example, www.example.com) in your files' URLs instead of using the domain name that CloudFront assigns to your distribution.
The primary difference between a CNAME record and an ALIAS record is not in the result—both record types point to another DNS record—but in how they resolve the target DNS record when queried. In short, one is safe to use at the zone apex (ex. naked domain, such as example.com) and the other is not.
Route 53 is a DNS service whereas Cloudfront is CDN service to serve static (and dynamic) content. You can use the cloudfront with Route 53 Geolocation Routing . But the location wise content delivery is already enabled in cloudfront , so geolocation policy wont help that much.
A Canonical Name or CNAME record is a type of DNS record that maps an alias name to a true or canonical domain name. CNAME records are typically used to map a subdomain such as www or mail to the domain hosting that subdomain's content.
The process you describe in your second paragraph is exactly right. You create the CNAME record in your domain using your DNS provider. You then tell CloudFront about the CNAME so it knows to use your distribution when requests come in with your CNAME in the HTTP Host header.
Hope this helps!
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