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Minimize downtime

When making any change to the routing of an Internet application, there is always a possibility of downtime due to certificate issuance, misconfigured settings, or limitations at your origin server. To avoid downtime when going live, it is important to review the most common configurations.

Update and review DNS records

Section titled “Update and review DNS records”

Before activating your domain on Cloudflare (exact steps depend on your DNS setup), review the DNS records in your Cloudflare account.

Start with unproxied records

Section titled “Start with unproxied records”

With a new domain, make sure all of your DNS records have a proxy status of DNS-only.

This setting prevents Cloudflare from proxying your traffic before you have an active edge certificate or before you have allowed Cloudflare IP addresses.

Confirm record accuracy

Section titled “Confirm record accuracy”

Take extra time to confirm the accuracy of your DNS records before activating your domain, paying special attention to:

If you add DNS records to your authoritative DNS provider between onboarding your domain and activating your domain, you may need to also add these records within Cloudflare.

Activate your domain

Section titled “Activate your domain”

Finish the DNS setup for your domain, moving the domain status to Active:

  • Full setups: Update the authoritative nameservers at your registrar and wait for that change to be authenticated.
  • Partial setups: Add the verification TXT record to your authoritative DNS and wait for that change to be authenticated.

Verify SSL/TLS edge certificates

Section titled “Verify SSL/TLS edge certificates”

Before proxying your traffic through Cloudflare, verify that Cloudflare has an active Edge Certificate for your domain.

For more details about timing and certificate recommendations, refer to Certificate issuance.

Optional - Test configuration

Section titled “Optional - Test configuration”

You may want to test your configuration using your local machine or proxying traffic from a development domain or subdomain.

If you experience issues, you should make sure that you have allowed Cloudflare IP addresses at your origin server.

Update proxy status

Section titled “Update proxy status”

Once you have verified that your SSL/TLS edge certificate is active and you have allowed Cloudflare IP addresses, change the proxy status of appropriate DNS records to Proxied.