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That’s a bit sub-optimal regarding how they handle domain setup, I agree.  You can get partial functionality by adding a NS record in your existing DNS servers for pointing specific records to their DNS servers even without going through the full domain delegation process.  After some testing, we were sufficiently happy with their service to move forward with the full delegation, but this technique worked well for kicking the tires without making the full commitment to their DNS service.

The down side to using the NS trick is that their SSL handling will not be fully active unless you do the whole domain.  Depending on what you hope to accomplish, that may be the make-or-break decision for using their service or not.  You can still do SSL on the host under some circumstances, but I believe all entries in the top level domain must use their certificates when acceleration is active.  Subdomains can still use the SSL certificate on the host even without full delegation.

Another reason to consider letting them handle your DNS (if you can) is that they have some pretty interesting plans for adding DNSSEC support for later this year.

At any rate, what I would suggest you consider is something like this:

test	IN	NS	ns1.ns.cloudflare.com
	IN	NS	ns2.ns.cloudflare.com

and replace ns1 and ns2 with the name servers assigned to your account.

Of course, you need a “test” record created on the CloudFlare end to serve the appropriate DNS entries.  This configuration will send all DNS queries for the test host to CloudFlare’s servers and through their acceleration infrastructure.

Hope this helps,
Andrew

-- 
Andrew Anderson, Director of Development, Library and Information Resources Network, Inc.
http://www.lirn.net/ | http://www.twitter.com/LIRNnotes | http://www.facebook.com/LIRNnotes

On Jun 19, 2015, at 18:29, Kun Lin <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> In most case, Cloudflare will want you to delete the whole domain to their
> DNS server. This is impossible for us to do. Therefore, I am trying to
> figure out CNAME option.
> 
> Thanks
> Kun
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Code for Libraries [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of
> Andrew Anderson
> Sent: Friday, June 19, 2015 3:24 PM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] quick question: CloudFlare
> 
> We have had good experience with it so far, yes.  Do you have a specific
> use case that you're concerned about?
> 
> --
> Andrew Anderson, Director of Development, Library and Information
> Resources Network, Inc.
> http://www.lirn.net/ | http://www.twitter.com/LIRNnotes |
> http://www.facebook.com/LIRNnotes
> 
> On Jun 19, 2015, at 12:58, Kun Lin <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> 
>> Quick question:
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> Who is using CloudFlare for their library website? Are they very
>> accommodating in using CNAME?
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> Thanks
>> 
>> Kun Lin