I'm working at a company which primarily provides SaaS products but also will host some of our customers corporate websites. My question relates to recommendations for managing DNS for client's domain names. My objectives:
- Not restrict my ability to change the server's IP address such as might happen when I move my servers to a new host. Specifically, I do not want to be required to contact the customer to change their domain's DNS if I need to change the server's IP address. Often times, customers lose this information or have to track down the one person with any knowledge of the domain settings.
- Map both
.clientdomain.com
andwww.clientdomain.com
to the proper IIS site.
However, I'm running into some common problems:
- Sometimes, the DNS console provided by the client's hosting company does not allow for CNAME records.
- Sometimes, the DNS console provided by the client's hosting company will not let me create a CNAME entry for
.spiffydomain.com
because the given hosting company has created a SOA record for that entry or simply requires that.spiffydomain.com
be anA
record.
I believe one solution to #2 is to use a wildcard for a CNAME entry (i.e. *.spiffydomain.com
). Is that correct?
How do other folks that are hosting many customer's site manage change of DNS entries on their servers?
Addition
An additional constraint is that many customers are adverse to having their DNS hosted by someone other than themselves. It might be a security issue or a control issue but regardless we are often unable to convince them to change control of DNS to us. One solution of course is to simply mandate that we must control DNS in order to host their site but it is unlikely that our salespeople have the fortitude to make that mandate if it meant potentially losing the business. From a salesperson's perspective, the inconvenience of managing DNS only causes IT problems, not them.