Issue with redirects from one instance to another instance

[Birbal_Negi]

Hi,

We're switching Marketo instance wherein landing pages domains will also change. Our current domains is abc.branddomain.com and we will be switching to xyz.branddomain.com.

To complete the switch for landing pages here are the steps we followed and these are validated by Marketo support as well.

1. Set up domain alias for abc.branddomain.com in the new Marketo instance, as outlined in the second half of the below document

https://docs.marketo.com/display/public/DOCS/Add+Additional+Landing+Page+CNAMEs​

2. Set up redirect rules for the old landing page URLs to the new landing pages

https://docs.marketo.com/display/public/DOCS/Redirect+a+Marketo+Landing+Page+to+Another+Page​

3. Complete the CNAME change to point abc.branddomain.com -> newinstance.mktoweb.com and delete the existing DNS entry for abc.branddomain.com from old instance

Even after completing all these steps the URLs from old instance are still opening with same URL and not redirecting to the new URLs. Is there something that we might be missing here?

Regards,

Birbal

[Jim_Thao7]

I feel you've got a long road ahead of you.  Here are my thoughts.

If you are no longer using abc.branddomain.com as a CNAME on the old instance, those links basically die out. 

EG. http://abc.branddomain.com/testing.html <--- no longer exists and can't be redirected to anywhere

Because you have 2 Marketo instances now, you won't actually be able to use this method.  In order for instance 1 to be able to redirect to instance 2, you will have to build out individual redirect rules for each page.  Each instance also needs to have their own CNAME intact still in order for the redirect to work. 

Here are some high level options from my perspective:

1. Re-create all your landing pages from your old instance into your new instance with the same URL (minus domain alias/cname).  This should resolve accordingly if you have the domain alias setup correctly in the new instance. 

2. Revert everything back.  Instead, create a domain alias on your old instance with your new domain.  Then, when you're done migrating all of your pages to the new instance, you can point your new domain and the old one both to your new instance.  For now, if you're creating stuff in your new instance, you'll have to use a different CNAME or live with the mkto URLS.

3. Create individual redirects for each landing page/URL

I'm open to hear about any other ideas, perhaps if even something can be done on the DNS side of things.

[Anonymous]

Hi Jim,

Thanks for your revert on this.

Before replying, i want to highlight that we will be shutting down our old Marketo instance very soon.

Now, as Birbal mentioned, we have created an additional CNAME in the new marketo instance and pointed abc.branddomain.com -> newinstance.mktoweb.com and delete the existing DNS entry for abc.branddomain.com from old instance.

So as you mentioned that If we are no longer using abc.branddomain.com as a CNAME on the old instance, those links basically die out. Unfortunately, it's not happening. We are still able to access all the urls from old instance. Is there any possible reason that why it's happening? We verified abc.branddomain.com from nslookup and it shows that dns has been changed.

[SanfordWhiteman]

Supply your real domains. The correct fake domain is example.com by the way, otherwise you're just misusing somebody else's domain.

[Anonymous]

Our old instance CNAME is ins.accenture.com which we now pointed to our new instance dns (accenturefinancial.mktoweb.com) but we are still able to access all the urls from old instance for which dns is (fs.mktoweb.com).

OLD Instance URL: https://ins.accenture.com/blog-subscription-center-en.html

[SanfordWhiteman]

The hostname

     fs.mktoweb.com

does not exist.

The pages you're loading from the host

     ins.accenture.com

are successfully loading from

     accenturefinancial.mktoweb.com

which means there's something you're not telling us. This isn't a case of URLs being loaded from the old instance. That URL (though not necessarily the same content) exists on the new instance.

Please show screenshots of the Admin » Integration » Landing Pages and Admin » Integration » Landing Pages » Rules tabs from both instances.

[Anonymous]

We have not created the same URL on the new instance.

Our new instance landing page is https://financialservices.accenture.com/ins-blog-subscription-en.html

We have just created an additional CNAME in the new marketo instance pointing ins.accenture.com -> accenturefinancial.mktoweb.com and a domain alias as ins.accenture.com.

So as per this above url should also open when use https://ins.accenture.com/ins-blog-subscription-en.html

but it's landing on fallout page.

Here is the Admin snapshot for new instance:

Old Instance(No rules there)

[SanfordWhiteman]

Please create the new Domain Alias

     ins-test.accenture.com

in the new instance so I can test something (you do not need to make any DNS changes).

[Anonymous]

It's created:

[SanfordWhiteman]

Thanks (you can delete the Domain Alias now).

Based on the available info, you've revealed a infrastructure bug.

Both the old and new LP domains are homed on the same CloudFlare server group (a set of load-balanced public IPs).

An SSL cert for ins.accenture.com is bound to the old instance on those IPs.  I'm assuming you didn't request an SSL cert to be bound to ins.accenture.com on the new instance. But even if you had that other cert available, SSL traffic can only be routed to one Marketo instance at a time, since inbound connections are always made to the same IPs.

To put it another way, the new and old instance have too many resources.in common, so they can't be easily swapped and swapped back. You need to get the SSL cert off the old instance completely and bound to the new one.

Contrast with what would happen if the new instance and old instance were on different public IPs. In that case, one IP could route inbound requests for ins.accenture.com to the old instance, while the other IP could route inbound requests for ins.accenture.com to the new instance.  You could still have the DNS entry for ins.accenture.com only point to one of the IPs at a time (at least if you didn't want to go crazy from unpredictable results!). But you wouldn't have to fully dismantle the old one to switch to the new, you could swap between them using DNS alone.