staging domain doesnt resolve

psybox

Hi
Originally I set staging.mydomain.com against the enhance control panel IP in cloudflare (A record). When you preview a site though it creates "previeweryeuriy.staging.mydomain.com" which never resolves. I created a staging domain on a test client called mytestdomain.staging.mydomain.com and it did not resolve either (yet wordpress auto installed, but you cannot login or see the website).

Re-reading the install instructions it suggests that I should not have created an A record in cloudflare for "staging". So I have removed it. However I am no further forward in getting "staging" to work. I created A record for webmail / phpmyadmin and they all work as expected.

I suspect cloudflare is causing some issues here - but I think I have the setup wrong??

twest

It's a little weird if you don't use Enhance DNS to host your staging domain. I really want 100% of my stack protected by Cloudflare, so I tested many things to get done to resolve, including adding the paid total tls service in CF to allow for valid SSL on sub-sub-domains, but nada work.

What finally did work for me was setting up my staging site on its own new domain so that my staging sites would resolve to website.stagingsite.com... Now that worked when I only had my one panel for hosting, but I was told I would need additional steps to get it to work on other hosting servers. Specifically, I was told to put a new record for *. hostname.stagingsite.com. now I don't know if that will run into the same problem I had before, because Cloudflare won't issue a valid SSL for sub-sub-domains, only sub-domains... I thought total tls would account for that problem though, but maybe not. It very may well be that we need to have a non-cloudflare domain with DNS managed by enhance-panel nameservers so it can get correct DNS config mapped out for all servers.

It's unfortunate, and opens a small security gap, exposed our origin server IPs, but to offer staging site functionality in enhance across multiple servers might not have any other option.

twest

I will test the issue of adding staging on additional servers with Cloudflare using the dedicated staging domain momentarily. I know it won't work on the free version for website.hostname.stagingsite.com, because that's too many level of subdomains down. So I will primarily be testing to see if it will resolve with Total TLS enabled which should give valid SSL and hopefully resolve... If the test fails, then there will be no way around it and the staging sites are just going to have to have DNS hosted on Enhance DNS.

twest

Okay I ran the test and confirmed it's not resolving with website.hostname.stagingsite.com. I have Total TLS in Cloudflare setup to validate sub-sub-domains automatically for *.hostname.stagingsite.com, but it doesn't resolve... I'm not sure why I was told to try that by Enhance guy, but it doesn't work.

What does work is just manually adding the dns into my staging site dns at Cloudflare for website.stagingsite.com and pointing the IP at whichever server the staging site is hosted at. You have to double check this because Enhance doesn't do the logical thing of placing staging sites on the same server as the website, so for me for example Enhance placed the staging site in another server in my case so I had to point the IP in Cloudflare at that server - it's a dumb waste of bandwidth that hopefully they fix in a future update (imagine you have a hosting site on a server in Los Angeles and the staging site gets dumped on a server you have in New York, now it has to transfer the data thousands of miles for no reason, then when you push it back to live it has to do that again, such a waste).

So to have 100% Cloudflare for staging, you need to manually create the dns entries at Cloudflare. If you want it to work automatically, you need to host your staging domain on the Enhance dns servers. Sucks, but it is what it is.

psybox

thanks @twest just to clarify;

your control panel (that all clients log into) is yourdomain.com
you have phpmyadmin.yourdomain.com / webmail.yourdomain.com etc (but not staging.yourdomain.com)
You have a new domain that you have set for the staging url - yourstagingdomain.com
you server hostnames are all serverA.yourstagingdomain.com / serverb.yourstagingdomain.com
in cloudflare you have then created A record for each server for serverA.yourstagingdomain.com / serverb.yourstagingdomain.com

I have to admit that is a little confusing and I have all my cloud servers using the same cloud domain name as the control panel and I dont want to have to undo that to be honest - but is doable I guess. A separate domain name for staging is super confusing for clients - but I really want to use cloudflare

twest

psybox you got it all pretty much right, except about server hostnames. My hostnames aren't setup to be related to the staging site domain, in your example my hostnames are host1.yourdomain.com, host 2.yourdomain.com.

And then the last step about Cloudflare, no I don't have records on my staging domain that point at anything anymore, since my test of making it automatic failed... The result of the test showed that whether you use a dedicated staging domain name or your main domain, it doesn't matter because Cloudflare and enhance don't work for automatic staging.

So you can keep using your main domain set to staging.yourdomain.com. And when you need to setup a staging site it will be site.staging.yourdomain.com. You will then need to create that as an A record in your Cloudflare (and you will need to buy $10/mo Total TLS do you can get an advanced SSL certificate that can put SSL on sub-sub-domains).

The alternative to all that is to use enhance DNS for your staging domain, then it will handle it all automatically. But you get no Cloudflare protection.

I'm not quite sure which way I'm going to go... I don't want to have to update my staging DNS at Cloudflare every time someone needs staging setup. But I also don't want any part of my stack to be unprotected by Cloudflare... For now, I'm just going to update Cloudflare manually as-needed, maybe enhance will fix this situation some day and it will work automatic.

psybox

twest thank you - that is he;pful/ I am going to keep my control panel url for the servers using cloudflare. I will purchase a spearate staging domain and host on enhance dns. Best of both worlds I think for now.

themew

We're in the process of creating staging for our cluster and having the same issues as @twest . Nothing we tried with Cloudflare, which we use for our main DNS (no CDN) worked. Enhance is installed on it's own VPS, each site is on it's own VPS and we have a separate VPS for all backups which is working perfectly, all using Cloudflare for DNS.

We created a separate staging domain, different from our main Enhance domain, created 2 nameservers in Enhance and registered the nameservers at the staging domain registrar. The nameserver records created, ns1.stagingdomain and ns2.stagingdomain never resolved. So we added ns records on Cloudflare pointing to the IP of our Enhance cluster which did resolve, however when staging was chosen, we got Failed to create website: Server role Backup on 0a67XXX-XXXX-XXXXX is not installed. or the script ran and showed FAILED. When running dig to the namesevers, we got errors like port 53 was blocked, which based on our firewall shows open.

Any ideas what am I missing for Enhance to handle DNS to create on-demand staging and cloning sites for clients on the same VPS their sites are hosted on using the staging domain? Do I need to activate PowerDNS on the Enhance server or does enabling Enhance's internal DNS and nameservers do this?

jonathonm

My Testing, the staging domain is not being added like a website like the control url or database url, when there. is no DNS for the root domain ssl's look to fail from LE. The work around for us was to add the root domain as a website manually.

themew

Did you have to create anything in the DNS ZONE section to get the staging domain to resolve to your Enhance server? Also, if you add the staging domain as a website, when clients on different servers stage their sites, are the staging sites stored on the client's servers or on the server the root domain website was manually created?

Thanks so much.

mendozal

themew When I created a staging domain I just used a subdomain.

If you use a new full domain, you need change the nameservers in the registrar and delegate them to you enhance nameservers.

If you use a subdomain (which I did) just delegate the subdomains via NS records to your enhance nameservers. In my experience this takes about 24 hours.

subdomain -> NS -> nameserver1
subdomain -> NS -> nameserver2

In enhance, the only thing you need to do is go to settings->platform and add that domain/subdomain as staging domain. It takes care of creating the zone and everything else. No other configuration needed.

This worked for me.

themew

mendozal Still struggling to add a new domain with staging, but I'm thinking of giving up on this.
Even with glue records at the registrar, I still can't get staging to resolve. Also, customers are seeing a popup message on their panel telling them that their dns servers are not configured properly, since they use different dns servers for their specific domains.

So, if using staging.paneldomain.com, and the dns servers are cloudflare, when creating ns records for the staging domain in cloudflare, do I simply point them to the existing cloudflare dns servers? Either I'm missing something, or there has to be an easier way. Also I'm considering using 2 domains, one just for staging and one for Enhance internal dns servers with glue records.

mendozal

themew If you have your panel's domain on Cloudflare... for example: paneldomain.com, and you want to use a staging subdomain "staging.paneldomain.com" you need to delegate the whole subdomain to enhance's internal dns.

Suppose you have 2 nameserver roles in your enhance instance: ns1.paneldomain.com, ns2.paneldomain.com, so in Cloudflare you set two A records for those:

ns1.paneldomain.com -> A Record to 1.2.3.4 (your server first nameserver role's IP)
ns2.paneldomain.com -> A record to 2.3.4.5 (your other nameserver role's IP)
(this should be already set if you're using Enhance)

Then, again in Cloudflare, you will create 2 NS records in order to delegate the subdomain to those nameservers.:

staging.paneldomain.com -> NS record to -> ns1.paneldomain.com
staging.paneldomain.com -> NS record to -> ns2.paneldomain.com

In my experience these records take 24 hours or even more to settle, so just need to wait a day or 2 and this should be working. Now enhance will manage this subdomain, not Cloudflare.

You obviously need to set your staging subdomain staging.paneldomain.com in the platform settings: /settings/platform

I hope it works.

ecomlabs

I have a question about website staging.

Shouldn't Enhance allow staging from the client's own domain?

Currently, Enhance allows domain configuration. Is it possible to add a client domain variable to the field? Let us know, @Adam

Cheers

Adam

ecomlabs

The staging website feature can be offered as a separate package resource to the Websites feature, that's why it is limited to a subdomain of the provider's staging domain. Staging websites also don't contribute to your licence cost.

If the client wants to use a subdomain of their own domain, they can just clone to a normal website (under a subdomain or an apex domain) rather than using the staging feature.