Put Your Kubernetes App on the Internet
It runs in the cluster. Now give the world a URL that reaches it.
Your app is deployed and healthy — but only you can reach it, through kubectl and port-forwards. This pathway covers everything between your Service and a stranger's browser: how DNS finds you, how TLS earns the padlock, and the Gateway API front door that ties it all together.
Deploying an app and exposing an app are different skills, and the second one crosses domains most Kubernetes tutorials skip: DNS, load balancing, and TLS all happen before a packet ever reaches your cluster. This route follows one request inward — from a name typed in a browser, across the open internet, through the front door, to your Service — so that when you wire it up, you know exactly what every piece is doing.
13 steps live · 4 sites
What you'll be able to do
- →Trace the full journey from a domain name to your Pod: DNS resolution, load balancing, TLS termination, and routing.
- →Explain what a certificate actually asserts — and why public-key cryptography makes strangers trustable.
- →Expose an app the current-standard way: a Gateway and
HTTPRoutewith Traefik, and know whattype: LoadBalancerreally provisions. - →Automate certificates with cert-manager and wire your real domain to the cluster end to end.
Between the browser and your cluster
From URL to Endpoint
Networking · EssentialsThe journey a request makes — name, port, binding — before your app ever hears it.
How DNS Actually Works
Networking · EssentialsResolution, records, and TTLs — how a name you own becomes an address that answers.
Load Balancer Basics
Networking · EssentialsThe machine in front of your machines — the first thing a public IP usually hits.
Earn the padlock
Open the front door
Services — Stable Networking for Pods
Kubernetes · EssentialsInside the cluster first: the stable address your Pods hide behind.
LoadBalancer Services: From Cloud to Bare Metal
Kubernetes · Essentialstype: LoadBalancer looks like magic — see what actually gets provisioned.
Gateway API: Gateways and HTTPRoutes with Traefik
Kubernetes · EfficiencyThe current-standard front door: one Gateway, an HTTPRoute per app.
Kubernetes Ingress: Reading the Front Door You Inherit
Kubernetes · EssentialsThe legacy front door you will inherit — read it, route with it, migrate from it.
Make it real
Automating TLS Certificates: ACME and Let's Encrypt
Networking · EfficiencyHow a machine proves it owns your domain — the protocol that ended certificate expiry.
cert-manager: Certificates as Cluster Resources
Kubernetes · EfficiencyOne annotation on the Gateway, and its certificates issue and renew themselves.
Pointing Your Domain at the Cluster with external-dns
Kubernetes · EfficiencyClose the loop: the name you own points at the Gateway you built — automatically.
Deploying Platform Services with Flux and OCI Artifacts
GitOps · EssentialsShip the whole edge stack the production way: one versioned artifact, zero manual commands.
Go deeper
Hardening the Public Edge
coming soonKubernetes · MasteryRate limits, WAFs, and what changes once real strangers can reach you.