Publish your website as a public secured service

Requirements

• Read the previous chapter Deploy abcdesktop on DigitalOcean with Kubernetes
• a DigitalOcean account
• your own internet domain
• doctl command line interface doctl cli
• kubectl command line
• wget command line

Overview

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

Create a new http-router service yaml file

The default installation configures the http-router service as a nodePort type. We will update the http-router service to use a LoadBalancer type.

Create a file named http-router.yaml

kind: Service
apiVersion: v1
metadata:
  name: http-router
  labels:
    abcdesktop/role: router-od
  annotations:
    service.beta.kubernetes.io/do-loadbalancer-healthcheck-port: "80"
    service.beta.kubernetes.io/do-loadbalancer-healthcheck-protocol: "http"
    service.beta.kubernetes.io/do-loadbalancer-protocol: "http"
    service.beta.kubernetes.io/do-loadbalancer-tls-ports: "443"
    service.beta.kubernetes.io/do-loadbalancer-tls-passthrough: "true"
    service.beta.kubernetes.io/do-loadbalancer-healthcheck-path: "/healthz"
spec: 
  type: LoadBalancer
  selector:
    run: router-od
  ports:
  - protocol: TCP
    port: 443
    targetPort: 443
    name: https
  - protocol: TCP
    port: 80
    targetPort: 80
    name: http

Save the http-router.yaml file.

Delete the previous http-router service:

NAMESPACE=abcdesktop
kubectl delete service http-router -n $NAMESPACE

You should see the following output:

service "http-router" deleted

Create the new service/http-router:

NAMESPACE=abcdesktop
kubectl apply -f http-router.yaml -n $NAMESPACE

You should see the following output:

service/http-router created

Wait a few minutes; the EXTERNAL-IP of the http-router service remains in Pending state.

NAMESPACE=abcdesktop
kubectl get services http-router -n $NAMESPACE 

NAME          TYPE           CLUSTER-IP      EXTERNAL-IP   PORT(S)        AGE
http-router   LoadBalancer   10.245.73.189   <pending>     80:32155/TCP   3s

Check the EXTERNAL-IP of the http-router service again:

kubectl get services http-router -n abcdesktop       

The service has been assigned 157.230.202.250 as its EXTERNAL-IP.

NAME          TYPE           CLUSTER-IP       EXTERNAL-IP       PORT(S)        AGE
http-router   LoadBalancer   10.245.245.242   157.230.202.250   80:30443/TCP   61s

Open a web browser to access your abcdesktop service using your IP address.

Replace 157.230.202.250 with your own IP address.

If your web browser blocks WebSocket connections without a secure protocol, use the https protocol instead.

Update your DNS zone file

We will use a FQDN (Fully Qualified Domain Name) to replace the IP address.

This screenshot shows the DigitalOcean network console, displaying the Domain configuration. You can also manage your zone file directly through your domain registrar.

Create new record

Create a new A record named hello (e.g., hello.abcdesktop.pepins.net) pointing to 157.230.202.250. Set a low TTL value to allow DNS changes to propagate quickly.

The IP address is shown in the DigitalOcean network console and corresponds to the EXTERNAL-IP of your http-router service.

kubectl get services http-router -n abcdesktop

You should see the following output:

NAME          TYPE           CLUSTER-IP      EXTERNAL-IP       PORT(S)                      AGE
http-router   LoadBalancer   10.245.143.46   157.230.202.250   443:31196/TCP,80:32043/TCP   16m

Click Create Record to update your zone file with the new record.

From your local device, open a web browser.

Web browsers block WebSocket connections without a secure protocol. To log in, use the https protocol.

Your website is marked as Not Secured. You must add an X.509 SSL certificate to secure the service.

Obtain a Certificate

If you already have an X.509 certificate with private and public key files for your website, you can skip this section.

To obtain an SSL certificate, this guide uses the Let's Encrypt service. You will need your new hostname and your email address.

Define the variables ABCDESKTOP_PUBLIC_FQDN and USER_EMAIL_ADDRESS:

ABCDESKTOP_PUBLIC_FQDN=hello.digitalocean.pepins.net
USER_EMAIL_ADDRESS=thisisyouremail@domain.com
ROUTER_POD_NAME=$(kubectl get pods -l run=router-od -o jsonpath={.items..metadata.name}  -n abcdesktop)
kubectl exec -n abcdesktop -it ${ROUTER_POD_NAME} -- /usr/bin/certbot certonly --webroot -w /var/lib/nginx/html -d ${ABCDESKTOP_PUBLIC_FQDN} -m "${USER_EMAIL_ADDRESS}" --agree-tos -n

You should see the following output:

Saving debug log to /var/log/letsencrypt/letsencrypt.log
Requesting a certificate for hello.digitalocean.pepins.net

Successfully received certificate.
Certificate is saved at: /etc/letsencrypt/live/hello.digitalocean.pepins.net/fullchain.pem
Key is saved at:         /etc/letsencrypt/live/hello.digitalocean.pepins.net/privkey.pem
This certificate expires on 2025-10-05.
These files will be updated when the certificate renews.

NEXT STEPS:
- The certificate will need to be renewed before it expires. Certbot can automatically renew the certificate in the background, but you may need to take steps to enable that functionality. See https://certbot.org/renewal-setup for instructions.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
If you like Certbot, please consider supporting our work by:
 * Donating to ISRG / Let's Encrypt:   https://letsencrypt.org/donate
 * Donating to EFF:                    https://eff.org/donate-le
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

The fullchain.pem and privkey.pem files are stored inside the container.

Certificate is saved at: /etc/letsencrypt/live/hello.digitalocean.pepins.net/fullchain.pem
Key is saved at:         /etc/letsencrypt/live/hello.digitalocean.pepins.net/privkey.pem

Export the certificate files and create a new Kubernetes secret.

kubectl exec -n abcdesktop -it  ${ROUTER_POD_NAME} -- cat /etc/letsencrypt/live/$ABCDESKTOP_PUBLIC_FQDN/fullchain.pem > fullchain.pem
kubectl exec -n abcdesktop -it  ${ROUTER_POD_NAME} -- cat /etc/letsencrypt/live/$ABCDESKTOP_PUBLIC_FQDN/privkey.pem > privkey.pem

Create a Secret for the X.509 Certificate

Create a Kubernetes secret named http-router-certificat using the fullchain.pem and privkey.pem file contents.

kubectl create secret tls http-router-certificat --cert=fullchain.pem --key=privkey.pem -n abcdesktop 

The secret has been created.

secret/http-router-certificat created

Update http-router ConfigMap to use the new http-router-certificat secret

Download abcdesktop-routehttp-config.4.4.yaml

wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/abcdesktopio/conf/refs/heads/main/kubernetes/abcdesktop-routehttp-config.4.4.yaml

Open the abcdesktop-routehttp-config.4.4.yaml file and locate the ConfigMap named abcdesktop-routehttp-config.

Uncomment the HTTPS section and replace YOUR_SERVER_NAME_AND_DOMAIN with your actual server name and domain.

 # nginx server config
 server {
     ...

     ######
     # uncomment this to enable https
     #
     listen 443 ssl http2 default_server;
     listen [::]:443 ssl http2 default_server;
     server_name YOUR_SERVER_NAME_AND_DOMAIN; # change this too
     ssl_certificate     /etc/nginx/ssl/tls.crt;
     ssl_certificate_key /etc/nginx/ssl/tls.key;
     #
     # end of https section
     ######

     ...
     index index.html index.htm;

For example:

     listen 443 ssl http2 default_server;
     listen [::]:443 ssl http2 default_server;
     server_name hello.digitalocean.pepins.net;
     ssl_certificate     /etc/nginx/ssl/tls.crt;
     ssl_certificate_key /etc/nginx/ssl/tls.key;

Apply the updated NGINX configuration file:

NAMESPACE=abcdesktop
kubectl apply -f abcdesktop-routehttp-config.4.4.yaml -n $NAMESPACE

Update deployment http-router

Update the deployment route to add the SSL certificate entry.

The abcdesktop-deployment-routehttps.4.4.yaml file adds mountPath: /etc/nginx/ssl to secretName: http-router-certificat.

NAMESPACE=abcdesktop
kubectl apply -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/abcdesktopio/conf/refs/heads/main/kubernetes/abcdesktop-deployment-routehttps.4.4.yaml -n $NAMESPACE

Reach your website using https protocol

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

The connection is secured. You can inspect the certificate details.