Map custom domain (and wildcard sub-domains) to Azure Website

Question

I've looked at all related posts in MSDN and stack overflow but still having difficulty finding a solution.

I am looking to map a domain and all sub-domains to my windows azure website. It is a reserved website instance. I am using Amazon Route 53 DNS manager and have mapped a wildcard CNAME to my azure sub domain, and created a redirect on the naked domain to the www. subdomain.

When I navigate to the naked root, the redirect kicks in and I'm brought to www..com, where I receive a 404 error from azure.

I know the wildcard CNAME is working. I've verified using MXToolbox. If I go to "Manage Domains" in the Azure web UI admin system, I can manually add "www..com" or any other subdomain (e.g. "helloworld..com"). Azure verifies it fine and after saving, I can pull up the website fine by navigating to that subdomain and my azure website loads.

Is there any way to add wild card subdomains without having to verify each one manually through the azure ui interface? My application is a SaaS that relies on custom user sub-domains to serve up their branded website and gain access to their account so I need any and all subdomains to map to my application.

Answer 1

Currently, wildcard domains are not supported as far as I know. At least on Windows Azure Web Sites. They are on the roadmap, but currently you'll have to rely on adding every domain manually.

See wildcard comment on "Configuring a custom domain name for a Windows Azure web site".

Answer 2

Another feature not yet available on Azure Web Sites is SSL using a vanity (your own) domain name. If you want full control of your site(s) you can use Azure Cloud Services instead of Web Sites. With Cloud Services you can provision certificates, domain names, and run multiple sites on the same instances using host header routing.

Anything you can do with IIS Management you can do with a cloud service.

You're a little closer to the metal compared to Azure Web Sites (but not as close as with a VM) and you get load balancing, scaling, caching, and other goodness. Visual Studio 2010/2012 has excellent deployment tooling. You will need to study up on Azure deployment projects from VS, bit it's not bad.