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CNAME records and DNS for Edge Services

This document contains information to help you successfully create a CNAME record for your customized Edge Services domain, and troubleshoot any potential DNS problems.

What is a CNAME record?

A Canonical Name (CNAME) record is a type of DNS record. Generally, DNS records hold information for translating a domain or subdomain to an IP address, mail server or other domain/subdomain. They are crucial in directing internet traffic to the correct servers. More specifically, CNAME records map one domain name (an alias) to another (the canonical name).

A CNAME record may look like the following:

Hostname / AliasDestination / Canonical Name
videos.example.comotherdomain.com

In this case, when a DNS server sees this record for videos.example.com, it does not to direct traffic to videos.example.com's own IP address, but to that of otherdomain.com. It finds otherdomain.com's IP address via its A record.

When the client actually connects to otherdomain.com's IP address, the web server can see that the requested URL was videos.example.com, and deliver the relevant content.

When and why do I need to create a CNAME record for Edge Services?

You only need CNAME records if you want to customize the standard Edge Services endpoint.

When you create an Edge Services pipeline to a backend, the backend content is served through the standard Edge Services endpoint, e.g., pipeline-id.svc.edge.scw.cloud. If you want to customize your Edge Services endpoint with your own subdomain, you must create a CNAME record to point your subdomain to the Edge Services endpoint.

  • If your domain is managed with Scaleway Domains and DNS, Scaleway generates the appropriate CNAME record during the Edge Services pipeline creation. It is visible among your Domains and DNS records in the console. Do not modify or delete the CNAME record. If you deactivate Edge Services, Scaleway automatically deletes the CNAME record.

  • If your domain is managed by an external provider, Scaleway cannot create the appropriate CNAME record. You are prompted, as part of the process for customizing your Edge Services domain, to create this record yourself with your domain provider.

    A screenshot of the Scaleway console showing the Configure Domain screen. Two sections display: Set a subdomain, and Configure SSL/TLS certificate.

How to create a CNAME record

Log in to your domain provider, and locate the DNS settings for your domain. Create a new CNAME record pointing your subdomain to the Edge Services endpoint for your backend. This endpoint can be retrieved from the Scaleway console.

The interface used by different domain providers varies, but creating your CNAME record may look like one of the following examples:

RecordDestination
my-chosen-subdomain.beautiful-domain.compipeline-id.svc.edge.scw.cloud.
SubdomainTarget host
my-chosen-subdomainpipeline-id.svc.edge.scw.cloud.
Host recordPoints to
my-chosen-subdomainpipeline-id.svc.edge.scw.cloud.
my-chosen-subdomainRecord TypeValue
@CNAMEis an alias of pipeline-id.svc.edge.scw.cloud.
Tip

The trailing dot at the end of the target endpoint (pipeline-id.svc.edge.scw.cloud.) is implicitly added by some domain and DNS providers, and must be explicitly added for others. Check with yours whether the dot is necessary.

You may also see a TTL field, which stands for Time To Live. This tells the DNS resolver how long it can cache this record, before it must re-check the origin source in case something has changed. TTL is measured in seconds, and the default value is usually 12 hours (43200 seconds) or 24 hours (86400 seconds).

Troubleshooting DNS and subdomain errors

See our dedicated documentation for help resolving any error message you may get related to your CNAME record.

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