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KraftCloud

Custom Domains

In this guide we will show you how to deploy an app on KraftCloud and link it to a domain name you own (e.g., mydomain.com).

Configuring your External DNS Provider

Before we can launch an app, you need to ensure that you have configured things correctly with your DNS provider. There are two cases here:

  • For a subdomain you own such as docs.mydomain.com, a CNAME is enough. In this case, you can just add a CNAME record with your sub-domain (docs) as the host and point the record to KraftCloud’s metro e.g., fra0.kraft.host.
  • For an apex domain (e.g., mydomain.com), add an ALIAS, ANAME, or flattened CNAME record. Depending on your provider, leave the host field empty or enter @. Point the record to KraftCloud’s metro e.g., fra0.kraft.host. If your DNS provider does not support ALIAS, ANAME, or flattened CNAME records, add an A record and point the record to the IP address of KraftCloud’s metro

Launching your App

Let’s assume we want to use NGINX as our app:

Terminal window
git clone https://github.com/kraftcloud/examples
cd examples/nginx

Make sure to log into KraftCloud by setting your token and a metro close to you. We use fra0 (Frankfurt, 🇩🇪) in this guide:

Terminal window
# Set KraftCloud access token
export KRAFTCLOUD_TOKEN=token
# Set metro to Frankfurt, DE
export KRAFTCLOUD_METRO=fra0

With this in place, we’ll use the kraft cloud deploy command to create an instance of the web server and to link it to a custom name; the latter is done through the -d flag:

Terminal window
kraft cloud deploy -p 443:8080 -d mydomain.com .

The resulting output of the deploy command should be similar to:

Terminal window
[●] Deployed successfully!
 │
 ├────────── name: nginx-67zbu
 ├────────── uuid: 269019de-f7dc-4077-9568-012ad594ca87
 ├───────── state: running
 ├─────────── url: https://mydomain.com
 ├───────── image: nginx@sha256:6abb4f2ba4501068a84885d7b8b127adaf3d83c25fd43e79d5a142f6d8703c93
 ├───── boot time: 11.13ms
 ├──────── memory: 1024 MiB
 ├─ service group: wispy-moon-dpg6d54i
 ├── private fqdn: nginx-67zbu.internal
 ├──── private ip: 172.16.6.5
 └────────── args: /usr/bin/nginx -c /etc/nginx/nginx.conf

In case you’re curious, when issuing the -d flag KraftCloud will request a new certificate from Let’s Encrypt.

You’re all set! You can test your deployment with curl:

Terminal window
curl https://mydomain.com

To see and manage your certificates you can use the kraft cloud cert command. For instance, to list your certificate, run:

Terminal window
kraft cloud cert ls

You should see output similar to:

Terminal window
NAME                           STATE  COMMON NAME              CREATED AT
mydomain.com-sa4x9             valid  mydomain.com             5 days ago

You can also retrieve full information about your certificate via

Terminal window
kraft cloud cert get mydomain.com-sa4x9

You should see output similar to:

Terminal window
                uuid: b8160db9-7cba-4b80-9107-c4fe27529bf5
                name: mydomain.com-sa4x9
               state: valid
         common name: mydomain.com
             subject: CN=mydomain.com
              issuer: CN=R3,O=Let's Encrypt,C=US
       serial number: 0455BBAEC140EACBA5FEEAE6D817E73EF266
          not before: 2024-03-07T18:06:11Z
           not after: 2024-06-05T18:06:10Z
          created at: 2024-03-07T19:06:04Z
      service groups: wispy-moon-dpg6d54i

Finally, if you want to remove the certificate, first make sure you (1) remove any instances from the relevant service group and (2) remove the service group. After that you can remove the actual certificate with:

Terminal window
kraft cloud cert rm mydomain.com-sa4x9

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