Using alias domain names makes it easy for SaaS businesses to sync the configuration of one domain name to others to achieve batch connection.
Note:
This feature is supported only by the Enterprise plan and is currently in beta test. If you need to use it, please contact the business personnel to enable the allowlist for use.
Purpose
Reading this document may take 10 minutes, which helps you understand:
What challenges for SaaS business can be overcome with alias domain names.
How to use alias domain names to relieve the workload of maintaining multiple domain names for the same business.
Background
SaaS providers offer customers preset templates that is customizable for various purposes without coding, such as corporate homepages, e-commerce platforms and tutoring websites. Customers are only responsible for site content as SaaS providers will take care of operation and maintenance. Customer requirements for sites can be identified as follows:
1. Sites can support personalized use of exclusive domain names.
2. HTTPS can be enabled for site security and trustworthiness.
3. Users can have fast, secure access to sites.
Current solution and pain points
For SaaS providers, the support required by users is basically identical, except for the site content. Thus, an architecture that can facilitate operation and maintenance is used:
It allows customer-defined domain names to associate with SaaS providers' domain names via CNAME, and supports sending SNI requests to origins via the HTTPS certificate, which is deployed in load balancers and web service clusters. However, this architecture has drawbacks:
1. The access performance can be affected when the web service clusters fail to handle volumes of concurrent requests.
2. Security capabilities against network attacks are not provided.
3. While maintaining customers' HTTPS certificates, the clusters cannot guarantee updates of numerous domain names.
EdgeOne Alias Names
With alias domain names, customer-defined domain names can be linked to the same SaaS website, which is a wildcard domain name connected with EdgeOne and specified as the target domain name. For details about how alias domain names work, see Overview. Using this feature, SaaS website builder can solve these problems:
1. When the target domain name is added to EdgeOne, it can access security and content acceleration services, which are also reachable for the alias domain names.
2. SaaS website builders can greatly reduce costs as a result of maintaining target domain names only.
3. Customer-defined domain names can be separately added to EdgeOne where applications for free certificates and auto-update are provided.
Your site has been connected to EdgeOne. For more information, see Adding Sites.
Before You Start
1. Set up a SaaS site, such as site1.example.com, site2.example.com, and site3.example.com, where site1.example.com can be accessed from a browser, as shown below:
2. Add a wildcard domain name of the SaaS site as an EdgeOne acceleration domain name and specify it as the target domain name, for example, *.example.com.
Note:
Since alias domain names share the same configuration and cache as the target domain name, using a wildcard domain name as the target domain name is recommended. This allows different SaaS sites to create their own cached resources to avoid cache conflicts.
3. Add customer-defined domain names as alias domain names. See the table below:
Customer-defined domain names
Sites
a.shop.com
site1.example.com
user1.customer.com
site2.example.com
www.platform.com
site3.example.com
Directions
Step 1. Create an alias domain name
1. Log in to the EdgeOne console. Navigate to Site List and select a site for management.
2. In the left sidebar, click Alias Domain Names. On the page that appears, click Create.
3. Enter a.shop.com as the alias domain name, select *.example.com as the target domain name, and set Off for certificate configuration. Click OK.
Step 2. Add a CNAME record that points to the target domain name
You must add a CNAME record that points to the target domain name to the alias domain name. Only activated alias domain names support applications for free certificates.
1. When the alias domain name is added, the status is default to Not activated. You need to go to the DNS provider where the alias domain name is located and add a CNAME record pointing to the target domain name. For details about modifying CNAME, see Modifying CNAME Records.
2. When the CNAME record is added, EdgeOne automatically checks for updates and changes the status of the domain alias to Activated.
Step 3. Verify the configuration
Access the alias domain name a.shop.com via your browser to verify whether it provides the same content as site1.example.com.
Other alias domain names user1.customer.com and www.platform.com can be verified in the same way.
Step 4. Apply for a free certificate (optional)
After you configure the CNAME record for the alias domain name by following Step 2, apply for a free HTTPS certificate as follows:
1. On the alias domain name list page, find alias1.site.com and click Configure in the HTTPS column. In the pop-up window, select Free certificate and click OK.
2. On the alias domain name list page, move the pointer over
