Is stage.*.example.com valid for a wildcard DNS CNAME?

We are creating a web app that will have vanity subdomains such as user1.example.com. Since we'll have many subdomains, they need to be dynamic. We want to have a public "stage" area where we can test before going live. The requirement states that all dns names start with stage.

I'm using an AWS load balancer so I have to use a CNAME. Research on google and here tell me that wildcards are supported in DNS CNAME entries (except perhaps when using godaddy) but I haven't yet convinced myself that you can have a wildcard in the middle of an entry.

Is stage.*.example.com valid for a wildcard DNS CNAME and would it work as I'd expect?

Thanks!

Solution 1:

The wildcard (the *) must be the leftmost part of the domain. So you can't do stage.*.example.com.

If you need to do wildcard DNS for this, I suggest using *.stage.example.com. This may require some minor changes to your deployment processes, but should not be significant.