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 ready and running.
your own internet domain
kubectl command line
helm command line

Overview

In this chapter we are going to, use a nginx-ingress-controller to host your abcdesktop service with a public IP Address, then configure dns zone file to use your own domain name, and activate TLS to secure your service.

Update http-router service

When installing abcdesktop, http-router service type is NodePort by default, in order to expose the service through an ingress controller you will need to 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 Create 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 a 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 completed, you can check that the service has been createed 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

Now wait a few minutes until you get 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 abe to join your service 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

We are going to create a new record hello (hello.azure.pepins.net) to the A address 48.216.154.238. I prefer to define low TTL value to fix some changes quickly.

azure console domain overview

Press 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 applications to the outside world by telling nginx what host each service maps to. You define a rule in nginx to associate a host to a abcdesktop route backend service.

Create an ingress resource for NGNIX using the abcdesktop service and save it as abcdesktop_host.yaml You need to update this manifest with your own FQDN, replace hello.azure.pepins.net by 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 fee seconds while the ADDRESS field is empty

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 tells nginx to route each HTTP request that is using the / prefix for the hello.azure.pepins.net host, to the route backend service running on port 80. In other words, every time you make a call to http://hello.azure.pepins.net/, the request and reply are served by the echo backend service running on port 80.

You can have multiple ingress controllers per cluster. The ingressClassName field in the manifest differentiates between multiple ingress controllers present in your cluster. Although you can define multiple rules for different hosts and paths in a single ingress resource.

reach your website from your new name

Web browser doesn't allow usage of websocket without secure protocol. To login you need https protocol.

As you can see, your website is Not Secured, we are going to add X509 SSL certificate to secure your service.

Enable HTTPS

Deploy Cert Manager on our AKS cluster

As we previously did for the nginx ingress controller, we are going to use helm to install cert manager on our cluster.

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 intalled, you can inspect the Kubernetes ressources 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

You can issue the certificate using an Issuer. Configure a certificate issuers resource for Cert-Manager, which fetches the TLS certificate for nginx to use. The certificate issuer uses the HTTP-01 challenge provider to accomplish this task.

Create the following manifest, replace <your-valid-email-address> with your own value, 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 each nginx ingress resource to use TLS. Open the previous abcdesktop_host.yaml manifest you created previously for the route application, add the annotations and tls sections shown below, and save the abcdesktop_host.yaml file : You can also add dedicated nginx.ingress.kubernetes.io annotations to increase default timeout values. Replace hello.azure.pepins.net by 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 appeard in the PORTS section.

Check that the certificate resource is 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 a simple curl command line curl -Li https://hello.azure.pepins.net/ 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 desktop pulic web site using https protocol.

reach your website using https

The status is secured and we get some informations from the certificate

reach your website using https

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

Reach your website using `https` protocol