Windows Azure - Add a Custom Domain to The Storage Account

Introduction:

In this article we are going to see how to add a custom domain to the Storage Account using the Windows Azure Management Portal.

Overview:

Custom domains are used to mainly point out applications with a much readable name and formatted names chosen as per the business needs. Normally in Windows Azure we have the storage accounts and other pointing with f5debug.blob.core.windows.net for a blob storage account, instead if we want to have a custom name like f5debug.blog.com we can make it but we need to follow certain things to do that.

First we need to register a domain such as f5debug.com for use in a third party site, then we need to use the DNS Names with the services, then we can add the custom domain to the storage services as required exactly like:

Current Storage URL - f5debugtest.blob.core.Windows.Net
Custom Storage URL - Blob.f5debug.com

Let us see the step by step process of how to do that. Anyways I am not registered with any 3rd party for a new domain name.

Steps:

Login to the Management Portal using the following link:

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsazure/
We will see a screen like below. Select "Sign into Management Portal" at the top right corner:



 
After selecting "Sign into Management Portal"  you will be asked for the Username and Password to authenticate the process as shown in the following screen:


 
After providing the correct credentials and clicking the submit button it will navigate to the main screen of the portal as shown in the following screen:


 
Now click on the Hosted Services, Storage Account and CDN option in the bottom menu and then select the Hosted Services as shown in the screen below.

Now click on the Storage Accounts Menu in the left side and we will see the list of storage accounts mapped with the subscription as shown in the screen below.

Now selecting the Storage Account will enable the Add Domain Ribbon button at the top menu as shown in the screen below.

Clicking on the Add Domain will pop up a window with the Current Storage account url and an empty place to enter a custom domain name (F5DebugCustom) as shown in the screen below.

After providing our custom domain name and clicking the OK button will start the progress of creating the new entry for adding the custom domain as shown in the screen below.

Once the custom domain record is created it will open a window with the CNAME record which is used to validate the account in the domain registered site. Just we need to copy the CNAME code from here and place it in the DNS registrar entry in the Domain registered site to validate the DNS servers as shown in the screen below.

Until the time we need to validate the DNS Server, we will see the status of the Custom domain account created as pending as shown in the screen below.

After we register the DNS Name (with CNAME Code) to the registered domain, we can go ahead and click the Validate Domain Ribbon menu as shown in the screen below.

(Note - Since we have not validated it yet with the custom domain registrar we will get anerror)

We will see the Validation Failed status with the CNAME record since we don't have a valid domain registered.

Now we will see the status of the custom domain as Forbidden as shown in the screen below, if the validation is succesful we will see the status as registered (Normally it will take some 1 to 2 hours time to get triggered from the registered site).

Conclusion:

So in this article we have seen how to add a custom domain to the Windows Azure Storage account using the Windows Azure Management Portal step by step.