Publish your website as a public secured service

Requirements

read the previous chapter Deploy abcdesktop on Azure with Kubernetes
az command line interface azure-cli installed.
A running Azure Kubernetes Service cluster that is ready and running.
your own internet domain
kubectl command line
helm command line

Overview

In this chapter, you will use an NGINX ingress controller to expose your abcdesktop service with a public IP address, configure your DNS zone file to use your own domain name, and enable TLS to secure the service.

Update http-router service

When installing abcdesktop, the http-router service type is NodePort by default. To expose the service through an ingress controller, you must change the service type from NodePort to ClusterIP.

If you perform a get services command you will see the NodePort type

kubectl get svc http-router -n abcdesktop
NAME          TYPE       CLUSTER-IP    EXTERNAL-IP   PORT(S)        AGE
http-router   NodePort   10.0.170.21   <none>        80:30443/TCP   5m31s

To change it, you will first need to delete the service

kubectl delete service http-router -n abcdesktop
service "http-router" deleted

Then paste the following lines in a new http-router.yaml file

kind: Service
apiVersion: v1
metadata:
  name: http-router
  labels:
    abcdesktop/role: router-od
spec:
  selector:
    run: router-od
  ports:
  - protocol: TCP
    port: 443
    targetPort: 443
    name: https
  - protocol: TCP
    port: 80
    targetPort: 80
    name: http

Then, apply your new service/http-router:

kubectl apply -f http-router.yaml -n abcdesktop
service/http-router created

Now check that the service type is ClusterIP

kubectl get svc http-router -n abcdesktop
NAME          TYPE        CLUSTER-IP     EXTERNAL-IP   PORT(S)          AGE
http-router   ClusterIP   10.0.132.230   <none>        443/TCP,80/TCP   5s

Deploy nginx ingress controller

You will now deploy an NGINX ingress controller on your cluster using helm.

First, run the following command to add the NGINX ingress controller repository:

helm repo add ingress-nginx https://kubernetes.github.io/ingress-nginx && helm repo update

Then install it on your cluster:

helm install ingress-nginx ingress-nginx/ingress-nginx --namespace ingress-nginx --create-namespace

Once the installation process has completed, you can verify that the service was created by running this command:

kubectl get svc ingress-nginx-controller -n ingress-nginx
NAME                       TYPE           CLUSTER-IP    EXTERNAL-IP      PORT(S)                      AGE
ingress-nginx-controller   LoadBalancer   10.0.54.215   <pending>   80:30940/TCP,443:30922/TCP   96s

Wait a few minutes until the service is assigned an EXTERNAL-IP:

NAME                       TYPE           CLUSTER-IP    EXTERNAL-IP      PORT(S)                      AGE
ingress-nginx-controller   LoadBalancer   10.0.54.215   48.216.154.238   80:30940/TCP,443:30922/TCP   96s

You must run the following command to add an Azure annotation to your NGINX ingress controller; otherwise, your service will not be reachable from the internet.

kubectl annotate svc ingress-nginx-controller -n ingress-nginx \
  service.beta.kubernetes.io/azure-load-balancer-health-probe-request-path=/healthz \
  --overwrite

Create new record

Create a new DNS A record named hello (e.g., hello.azure.pepins.net) pointing to 48.216.154.238. Set a low TTL value to allow DNS changes to propagate quickly.

azure console domain overview

Press the Add button to update your zone file with the new record.

azure console domain overview

Configure NGINX Ingress Rules for Backend Services

In this step, you expose the backend services to the outside world by telling NGINX what host each service maps to. You define a rule in NGINX that associates a hostname with the abcdesktop route backend service.

Create an ingress resource for NGINX using the abcdesktop service and save it as abcdesktop_host.yaml. Update this manifest with your own FQDN by replacing hello.azure.pepins.net with your own values.

apiVersion: networking.k8s.io/v1
kind: Ingress
metadata:
  name: ingress-abcdesktop
  namespace: abcdesktop
spec:
  rules:
    - host: hello.azure.pepins.net
      http:
        paths:
          - path: /
            pathType: Prefix
            backend:
              service:
                name: http-router
                port:
                  number: 80
  ingressClassName: nginx

Apply the Ingress yaml file

kubectl apply -f abcdesktop_host.yaml -n abcdesktop

You should read

ingress.networking.k8s.io/ingress-abcdesktop created

Verify the ingress resources:

kubectl get ingress -n abcdesktop

The output looks similar to the following:

Wait a few seconds while the ADDRESS field is being populated

NAME                 CLASS   HOSTS                    ADDRESS   PORTS   AGE
ingress-abcdesktop   nginx   hello.azure.pepins.net             80      5s

When you obtain an IP ADDRESS

NAME                 CLASS   HOSTS                    ADDRESS          PORTS   AGE
ingress-abcdesktop   nginx   hello.azure.pepins.net   48.216.154.238   80      55s

The spec section of the manifest contains a list of host rules used to configure the Ingress. If unspecified, or no rule matches, all traffic is sent to the default backend service. The manifest has the following fields:

host specifies the fully qualified domain name of a network host, for example echo.<your-domain-name>.
http contains the list of HTTP selectors pointing to backends.
paths provides a collection of paths that map requests to backends.

In the example above, the ingress resource instructs NGINX to route each HTTP request using the / prefix for the hello.azure.pepins.net host to the http-router backend service on port 80. Every request to http://hello.azure.pepins.net/ is served by the http-router backend service.

You can have multiple ingress controllers per cluster. The ingressClassName field in the manifest differentiates between them. You can also define multiple rules for different hosts and paths within a single ingress resource.

reach your website from your new name

Web browsers do not permit WebSocket connections over an insecure protocol. To log in, you must use the https protocol.

As you can see, the website is marked Not Secured. The next step adds an X.509 SSL certificate to secure the service.

Enable HTTPS

Deploy Cert Manager on our AKS cluster

Use helm to install cert-manager on your cluster, following the same approach used for the NGINX ingress controller.

First add the cert-manager helm repository:

helm repo add jetstack https://charts.jetstack.io && helm repo update

Then install it on your cluster:

helm install \
  cert-manager oci://quay.io/jetstack/charts/cert-manager \
  --namespace cert-manager \
  --create-namespace \
  --set crds.enabled=true

Once installed, you can inspect the Kubernetes resources created by Cert Manager:

kubectl get all -n cert-manager

The output looks similar to the following

NAME                                           READY   STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
pod/cert-manager-7ff7f97d55-l6ws6              1/1     Running   0          7m31s
pod/cert-manager-cainjector-59bb669f8d-lj927   1/1     Running   0          7m31s
pod/cert-manager-webhook-59bbd786df-jlmzb      1/1     Running   0          7m31s

NAME                              TYPE        CLUSTER-IP     EXTERNAL-IP   PORT(S)            AGE
service/cert-manager              ClusterIP   10.0.193.131   <none>        9402/TCP           7m32s
service/cert-manager-cainjector   ClusterIP   10.0.185.217   <none>        9402/TCP           7m32s
service/cert-manager-webhook      ClusterIP   10.0.78.107    <none>        443/TCP,9402/TCP   7m32s

NAME                                      READY   UP-TO-DATE   AVAILABLE   AGE
deployment.apps/cert-manager              1/1     1            1           7m32s
deployment.apps/cert-manager-cainjector   1/1     1            1           7m32s
deployment.apps/cert-manager-webhook      1/1     1            1           7m32s

NAME                                                 DESIRED   CURRENT   READY   AGE
replicaset.apps/cert-manager-7ff7f97d55              1         1         1       7m32s
replicaset.apps/cert-manager-cainjector-59bb669f8d   1         1         1       7m32s
replicaset.apps/cert-manager-webhook-59bbd786df      1         1         1       7m32s

The cert-manager pods and webhook service are running.

Cert-Manager creates custom resource definitions (CRDs). Cert-Manager relies on three important CRDs to issue certificates from a Certificate Authority (such as Let’s Encrypt):

Issuer: Defines a namespaced certificate issuer, which allows you to use different CAs in each namespace.

ClusterIssuer: Similar to Issuer, but it does not belong to a namespace and can be used to issue certificates in any namespace.

Certificate: Defines a namespaced resource that references an Issuer or ClusterIssuer for issuing certificates.

Inspect the CRDs by running the following command:

kubectl get crd -l app.kubernetes.io/name=cert-manager

The output looks similar to the following:

NAME                                  CREATED AT
certificaterequests.cert-manager.io   2026-01-21T08:12:10Z
certificates.cert-manager.io          2026-01-21T08:12:10Z
challenges.acme.cert-manager.io       2026-01-21T08:12:11Z
clusterissuers.cert-manager.io        2026-01-21T08:12:11Z
issuers.cert-manager.io               2026-01-21T08:12:11Z
orders.acme.cert-manager.io           2026-01-21T08:12:10Z

Configure Production-Ready TLS Certificates for nginx

Configure a Cert-Manager Issuer resource that fetches TLS certificates for NGINX using the HTTP-01 challenge provider.

Create the following manifest, replace <your-valid-email-address> with your own email address, and save it as cert-manager-issuer.yaml:

apiVersion: cert-manager.io/v1
kind: Issuer
metadata:
  name: letsencrypt-nginx
spec:
  acme:
    email: <your-valid-email-address>
    server: https://acme-v02.api.letsencrypt.org/directory
    privateKeySecretRef:
      name: letsencrypt-nginx-private-key
    solvers:
      # Use the HTTP-01 challenge provider
      - http01:
          ingress:
            class: nginx

The ACME issuer configuration has the following fields:

email: Email address to be associated with the ACME account. server: URL used to access the ACME server’s directory endpoint. privateKeySecretRef: Kubernetes secret to store the automatically generated ACME account private key.

The ingress resources use the HTTP-01 challenge.

kubectl apply -f cert-manager-issuer.yaml -n abcdesktop

The output looks similar to the following:

issuer.cert-manager.io/letsencrypt-nginx created

Verify that the Issuer resource is created:

kubectl get issuer -n abcdesktop

The output looks similar to the following:

NAME                READY   AGE
letsencrypt-nginx   True    7s

Next, configure the NGINX ingress resource to use TLS. Open the abcdesktop_host.yaml manifest, add the annotations and tls sections shown below, and save the file. You can also add nginx.ingress.kubernetes.io annotations to increase default timeout values. Replace hello.azure.pepins.net with your own FQDN:

apiVersion: networking.k8s.io/v1
kind: Ingress
metadata:
  name: ingress-abcdesktop
  namespace: abcdesktop
  annotations:
   cert-manager.io/issuer: letsencrypt-nginx
   nginx.org/client-max-body-size: "256M"
   nginx.ingress.kubernetes.io/proxy-connect-timeout: "30"
   nginx.ingress.kubernetes.io/proxy-read-timeout: "1800"
   nginx.ingress.kubernetes.io/proxy-send-timeout: "1800"
   nginx.ingress.kubernetes.io/proxy-body-size: "256M"
spec:
  tls:
   - hosts:
     - hello.azure.pepins.net
     secretName: letsencrypt-nginx-echo
  rules:
    - host: hello.azure.pepins.net
      http:
        paths:
          - path: /
            pathType: Prefix
            backend:
              service:
                name: http-router
                port:
                  number: 80
  ingressClassName: nginx

Run the following command to configure the hosts to use TLS:

kubectl apply -f abcdesktop_host.yaml -n abcdesktop

After a few minutes, check the state of the ingress object:

kubectl get ingress -n  abcdesktop
NAME                 CLASS   HOSTS                    ADDRESS         PORTS     AGE
ingress-abcdesktop   nginx   hello.azure.pepins.net   52.184.250.38   80, 443   9m18s

You see that 443 has appeared in the PORTS section.

Verify that the certificate resource has been created:

kubectl get certificates -n abcdesktop

The output looks similar to the following:

NAME                     READY   SECRET                   AGE
letsencrypt-nginx-echo   True    letsencrypt-nginx-echo   3m27s

Run the following curl command to confirm that your secured abcdesktop service is running:

curl -Li https://hello.azure.pepins.net/
HTTP/2 200 
date: Wed, 21 Jan 2026 09:56:41 GMT
content-type: text/html
content-length: 56291
vary: Accept-Encoding
last-modified: Tue, 20 Jan 2026 12:19:32 GMT
etag: "696f72d4-dbe3"
accept-ranges: bytes
x-frame-options: SAMEORIGIN
x-xss-protection: 1; mode=block
strict-transport-security: max-age=31536000; includeSubDomains

<!doctype html>
...

Reach your website using `https` protocol

You can now connect to your abcdesktop public website using the https protocol.

reach your website using https

The connection is secured and you can inspect the certificate details.

reach your website using https

See real client IP address behind ingress controller

Now that your application is publicly exposed, you may want to consider the security implications of traffic flowing through your cluster.
For example, the console module of abcdesktop should not be accessible to everyone, as it is designed to be an administrator console. That is why, when you install abcdesktop, there is a pool of permitted IP addresses specified in the od.config file.

ManagerController': { 'permitip': [ '10.0.0.0/8', '172.16.0.0/12', '192.168.0.0/16', 'fd00::/8', '169.254.0.0/16', '127.0.0.0/8' ] }

By default, the configuration only permits private networks defined in RFC 1918 and RFC 4193. Because your service is publicly exposed, none of your visitors should be able to access the console. However, you may find that the console is actually accessible, which is not the expected behavior.

access console ok

And when you check Pyos logs you will see why console behaves like that.

kubectl get pods -n abcdesktop
NAME                            READY   STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
console-od-5cd84fdd69-zbjxf     1/1     Running   0          11m
memcached-od-6ccd5b5f67-wwnw8   1/1     Running   0          11m
mongodb-od-0                    2/2     Running   0          11m
nginx-od-784885cbd5-b7dqx       1/1     Running   0          11m
openldap-od-bb485cb4b-2ltm8     1/1     Running   0          11m
pyos-od-5c5cfdbfc8-t9r9m        1/1     Running   0          11m
router-od-6b7456b789-dsqdh      1/1     Running   0          11m
speedtest-od-8686c67749-hncft   1/1     Running   0          11m

kubectl exec -it pyos-od-5c5cfdbfc8-t9r9m -n abcdesktop -- bash
Defaulted container "pyos" out of: pyos, wait-for-mongo (init)
pyos-od-5c5cfdbfc8-t9r9m:/var/pyos# tail logs/trace.log 
2026-02-06 16:03:51 abcpool1-node-fa2594 139923622185784 base_controller [DEBUG  ] controllers.manager_controller.ManagerController.apifilter:anonymous 
2026-02-06 16:03:51 abcpool1-node-fa2594 139923622185784 base_controller [DEBUG  ] controllers.manager_controller.ManagerController.ipfilter:anonymous 
2026-02-06 16:03:51 abcpool1-node-fa2594 139923622185784 base_controller [DEBUG  ] controllers.manager_controller.ManagerController.ipfilter:anonymous ipsource 10.2.1.0 is permited in network 10.0.0.0/8
2026-02-06 16:03:51 abcpool1-node-fa2594 139923622185784 manager_controller [DEBUG  ] controllers.manager_controller.ManagerController.handle_desktop_GET:anonymous 
2026-02-06 16:03:51 abcpool1-node-fa2594 139923622185784 orchestrator [DEBUG  ] oc.od.orchestrator.ODOrchestratorKubernetes.__init__:anonymous load_incluster_config done
2026-02-06 16:03:51 abcpool1-node-fa2594 139923622185784 od [INFO   ] __main__.trace_response:anonymous /manager/desktop b'[]'
2026-02-06 16:03:55 abcpool1-node-fa2594 139923627645752 od [INFO   ] __main__.trace_request:anonymous /healthz
2026-02-06 16:04:05 abcpool1-node-fa2594 139923618954040 od [INFO   ] __main__.trace_request:anonymous /healthz
2026-02-06 16:04:15 abcpool1-node-fa2594 139923617876792 od [INFO   ] __main__.trace_request:anonymous /healthz
2026-02-06 16:04:25 abcpool1-node-fa2594 139923621108536 od [INFO   ] __main__.trace_request:anonymous /healthz

As you can see in the logs, the source IP address seen by Pyos is a private IP address such as 10.X.X.X (within the subnet defined as internal to your cluster), which falls within the pool of permitted IP addresses.

This occurs because the NGINX Ingress Controller forwards requests using its own cluster IP address rather than preserving the client's original IP. As a result, both Router and Pyos see the IP address of the ingress controller load balancer.

To fix this, update the configuration of your NGINX ingress controller by pasting the following lines into a patch-ingress.yaml file:

controller:
  service:
    externalTrafficPolicy: "Local"
    annotations:
      service.beta.kubernetes.io/azure-load-balancer-health-probe-request-path: "/healtz"
  config:
    use-proxy-protocol: "false"
    real-ip-header: X-Real-IP
    proxy-real-ip-cidr: "10.0.0.0/8"
    compute-full-forwarded-for: "true"
    use-forwarded-headers: "true"
    log-format-upstream: '{"time": "$time_iso8601", "remote_addr": "$proxy_protocol_addr", "x_forwarded_for": "$proxy_add_x_forwarded_for", "http_x_forwarded-for": "$http_x_forwarded_for", "request_id": "$req_id", "remote_user": "$remote_user", "bytes_sent": $bytes_sent, "request_time": $request_time, "status": $status, "vhost": "$host", "request_proto": "$server_protocol", "path": "$uri", "request_query": "$args", "request_length": $request_length, "method": "$request_method", "http_referrer": "$http_referer",  "http_user_agent": "$http_user_agent" }'

Run the following command to apply it:

helm upgrade ingress-nginx ingress-nginx/ingress-nginx -n ingress-nginx -f patch-loadbalancer.yaml

Retry connecting to the console. You should now see an error message in the top-right corner.

access console ok

You can also inspect the Pyos logs to verify that your public IP address is now visible as the source IP:

kubectl exec -it pyos-od-5c5cfdbfc8-t9r9m -n abcdesktop -- bash
Defaulted container "pyos" out of: pyos, wait-for-mongo (init)
pyos-od-5c5cfdbfc8-t9r9m:/var/pyos# tail logs/trace.log 
2026-02-06 16:25:25 abcpool1-node-fa2594 139923622185784 od [INFO   ] __main__.trace_request:anonymous /healthz
2026-02-06 16:25:35 abcpool1-node-fa2594 139923627645752 od [INFO   ] __main__.trace_request:anonymous /healthz
2026-02-06 16:25:37 abcpool1-node-fa2594 139923618954040 od [INFO   ] __main__.trace_request:anonymous /manager/healtz
2026-02-06 16:25:37 abcpool1-node-fa2594 139923618954040 base_controller [DEBUG  ] controllers.manager_controller.ManagerController.apifilter:anonymous 
2026-02-06 16:25:37 abcpool1-node-fa2594 139923618954040 base_controller [DEBUG  ] controllers.manager_controller.ManagerController.ipfilter:anonymous 
2026-02-06 16:25:37 abcpool1-node-fa2594 139923618954040 base_controller [INFO   ] controllers.manager_controller.ManagerController.ipfilter:anonymous ipsource <your_public_ip> access is denied, not in network list [IPNetwork('10.0.0.0/8'), IPNetwork('172.16.0.0/12'), IPNetwork('192.168.0.0/16'), IPNetwork('fd00::/8'), IPNetwork('169.254.0.0/16'), IPNetwork('127.0.0.0/8')]
2026-02-06 16:25:37 abcpool1-node-fa2594 139923618954040 base_controller [ERROR  ] controllers.manager_controller.ManagerController.raise_http_error_message:anonymous 403.7 - IP address access denied
2026-02-06 16:25:37 abcpool1-node-fa2594 139923618954040 od [INFO   ] __main__.trace_response:anonymous /manager/healtz b'{"status": 403, "message": "403.7 - IP address access denied"}'
2026-02-06 16:25:45 abcpool1-node-fa2594 139923617876792 od [INFO   ] __main__.trace_request:anonymous /healthz
2026-02-06 16:25:55 abcpool1-node-fa2594 139923621108536 od [INFO   ] __main__.trace_request:anonymous /healthz

Publish your website as a public secured service

Requirements

Overview

Update http-router service

Deploy nginx ingress controller

Create new record

Configure NGINX Ingress Rules for Backend Services

Enable HTTPS

Deploy Cert Manager on our AKS cluster

Configure Production-Ready TLS Certificates for nginx

Reach your website using https protocol

See real client IP address behind ingress controller

Reach your website using `https` protocol