How do cloud instance domain names work?

[wizdum]

I have been playing around with Microsoft's Azure and starting thinking about how DNS resolution works with all these "cloud" providers. If I start up 10 different virtual servers (that are not web servers), I get 10 different domain names (mystuff.cloudapp.net, mystuff.blob.core.microsoft.net, etc.). They can't be giving out a public IP for each one of these domains, right? That would get expensive quickly. Port forwarding can be used to map ports on a public IP address to different internal servers, but then everyone would need to use a different, non-standard port for their service. Are they somehow pointing public domain names at private IP addresses (with something in the middle to properly route them)?

Or do they just have a metric-frack-ton of IP addresses so they can afford to hand them out like candy?

 

[JTY]

They've got a ton of IPs.

 

[wizdum]

Damnit. Why can't reality be as interesting as the world inside my head.

 

[EricGRIT]

Host headers? That's how I run multiple sites off my single IP at home.

 

[wizdum]

Host headers? That's how I run multiple sites off my single IP at home.

Yeah, I have been doing that with websites. I was hoping there was a similar method for running other types of services (email, FTP, databases, game servers, etc.) as well. The way it worked in my head is this: vm1.mysite.com, vm2.mysite.com, vm3.mysite.com, etc all point to 10.10.10.10. 10.10.10.10 is running a DNS and routing service that "knows" vm1.mysite.com needs to point to 192.168.1.50, vm2.mysite.com points to 192.168.1.51, etc.

 

[Jay_2]

Reverse proxy is also a good way.

 

[/usr/home]

Reverse proxy is also a good way.

This.

 

[Grentz]

Most of it is proxy. I am more familiar with aws where you can choose only an internal IP to your instance or a true public IP.