CNAME / URL Redirects?

[revolutn]

I'm having an issue at the office that I'm open to suggestions regarding.

We have a small group of users who are going to pilot a hosted cloud mail service from IBM.

We would like to use an easier than actual URL for memorization purposes if they go to access from a non domain machine, like their home pc etc and have that redirect to the actual service address.

I.E.: mail.mycodomainname.com > apps.na.collabserv.com

My internal DNS admin assured me this could be done with a CNAME record entry to DNS.

However that is not working, because...

If you do an NSLOOKUP of apps.na.collabserv.com

Non-authoritative answer:
Name: e425.b.akamaiedge.net
Address: 184.85.1.213
Aliases: apps.na.collabserv.com
engage.lotuslive.com.edgekey.net

You get the content distribution network as repsonses as well.

So...

When I put our CNAME alias mail.mycodomainname.com I end up at an error / bad url page.

Which matches exactly if I try to go to:
engage.lotuslive.com.edgekey.net

But all works fine if I go to:
apps.na.collabserv.com

Which is what we were trying to achieve with the CNAME entry, but the end result is not working.

Any advice?

I'm not running an IIS server or webpage responding to mail.mycodomainname.com right now, so an http url redirect is less than the ideal solution, and why I'm looking for any suggestions.

Thanks in advance,

Rev

 

[Cooky]

Chances are the provider's server or apps delivery controller is looking for a specific URL string "apps.na.collabserv.com" to spit out the correct page & content.

If that's the case, there's pretty much nothing you can do about it, unless you re-write the URL before the request hits the provider's server/ADC.

It sounds like your DNS admin simply created a CNAME record that points to the provider's IP.
This won't work because the URL is still mail.mycodomainname.com.

Instead, what you can try, is set up a simple page on a server/ADC that's within your control, and do a 301/302 redirect to apps.na.collabserv.com.

Another option is ask the provider for a more friendly URL that you can use.
Until you sign the contract, you can ask for anything.
Worst case is they say no.

 

[revolutn]

Thanks Cooky.

I didn't really have time today to deal with this, I'll try to update the thread if I get time to work on it tomorrow or Friday.

Rev

 

[revolutn]

Instead, what you can try, is set up a simple page on a server/ADC that's within your control, and do a 301/302 redirect to apps.na.collabserv.com.

We've decided to go this route, and already tested it out on an existing domain name.
We're now going to pop the like $15 for a separate domain name that is easy to remember for our employees and do the redirect from that url to the providers.

Thanks again.
Rev

 

[Cooky]

NP - glad to help.

In my opinion, this is something that your provider should be able to easily support, w/o you having to spin up a separate domain or do anything.

All they have to do, is add an extra "class-map" on their ADC.
Sometimes though it's quicker & less pain to just solve the problem yourself.