Tutorial Series: Exposing a Service with Aegis

Part 1 — Local HTTPS with a whoami service

Prerequisite: Before starting this tutorial, make sure your Aegis gateway and Envoy are up and running. Follow the Getting Started guide first — this tutorial picks up from a working gateway.

This tutorial walks through deploying a simple whoami web service and exposing it over HTTPS through Envoy, using Aegis's built-in Local CA — no public domain or open ports required.

You will:

1. Run a whoami container alongside Aegis + Envoy
2. Add a cluster and filter chain in Aegis
3. Issue a TLS certificate from the Local CA
4. Add a /etc/hosts entry
5. Access https://whoami.local from your browser

Prerequisites

• Docker and Docker Compose installed
• Aegis + Envoy already running and accessible at http://localhost:8765
• Admin access to add an /etc/hosts entry on your machine

Step 1 — Run the whoami container

Start whoami as a standalone container with a published port:

docker run -d --name whoami -p 8081:80 --restart unless-stopped traefik/whoami

It runs independently — no changes to your existing docker-compose.yml needed.

Step 2 — Add a cluster in Aegis

Open the Aegis dashboard → Gateway → Clusters → Add Cluster.

Mac / Docker Desktop only: expand Advanced parameters and add {"dnsLookupFamily":"V4_ONLY"} — Docker Desktop resolves host.docker.internal to IPv6 first, which breaks connections to IPv4-only containers.

Save — Aegis pushes the cluster to Envoy immediately.

Step 3 — Issue a Local CA certificate

3a — Create a Local CA provider (first time only)

Go to Certificates → Signing Providers → Add Provider, choose Local CA, give it a name (e.g. Local CA), and save.

3b — Issue the certificate

Go to Certificates → Managed Certs → Issue Certificate:

Click Issue. The cert is generated and pushed to Envoy SDS within a second. Note the secret name shown (e.g. tls-whoami-local).

Step 4 — Add a filter chain to the HTTPS listener

Go to Gateway → Listeners → https_listener → Edit.

Click Add Filter Chain and fill in:

Leave Route Prefix as / and click Add. Envoy picks up the new filter chain within ~1 second.

Step 5 — Trust the Root CA

First, download the Root CA certificate. You can do this two ways:

Option A — from the UI: Go to Certificates → Signing Providers, click Download CA Cert next to your Local CA provider. This downloads aegis-local-ca.crt directly from the browser.

Option B — via curl:

curl -s http://localhost:8765/api/certs/ca -o aegis-local-ca.crt

Then install it in your OS trust store:

macOS:

sudo security add-trusted-cert -d -r trustRoot -k /Library/Keychains/System.keychain aegis-local-ca.crt

Linux:

sudo cp aegis-local-ca.crt /usr/local/share/ca-certificates/aegis-local-ca.crt
sudo update-ca-certificates

Windows (PowerShell as Administrator):

Import-Certificate -FilePath aegis-local-ca.crt -CertStoreLocation Cert:\LocalMachine\Root

Restart your browser after installing the CA.

Step 6 — Add an /etc/hosts entry

Map whoami.local to the IP address of the machine running Envoy:

• Running on your local machine — use 127.0.0.1
• Running on a NAS or remote server — use that machine's LAN IP (e.g. 192.168.1.100)

# Local machine
echo "127.0.0.1  whoami.local" | sudo tee -a /etc/hosts

# Or remote host (replace with actual IP)
echo "192.168.1.100  whoami.local" | sudo tee -a /etc/hosts

On Windows, edit C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts as Administrator.

Step 7 — Open in browser

Navigate to https://whoami.local.

You should see the whoami response — hostname, IP, headers — served over HTTPS with a valid (locally trusted) certificate and no browser warning.

What just happened

Browser → https://whoami.local:443
            │  SNI = whoami.local
            ▼
         Envoy (port 10443)
            │  filter chain match: whoami.local
            │  TLS: cert from Aegis SDS (signed by Local CA)
            ▼
         whoami container (port 80)

Aegis issued the cert from its internal Root CA, pushed it to Envoy via xDS SDS, and Envoy presented it during the TLS handshake. Your browser trusted it because you installed the Root CA.

Cleanup

To remove the setup:

1. Delete the managed cert in Aegis → Certificates
2. Remove the filter chain from https_listener
3. Delete the whoami cluster
4. Remove the /etc/hosts line
5. Stop the whoami container: docker rm -f whoami

Next

Part 2 → Configure the Gateway with Owl AI You've seen how to set this up manually. In the next tutorial, you hand a single prompt to Owl AI and it configures the cluster, certificate, and filter chain for you — no UI clicks required.