Host a website on Azure Virtual Machine with SSL enabled using Let’s Encrypt & add a custom domain managed by Azure DNS.

mobanto August 2, 2022

Create a Virtual machine and install a web server

Now connect this servers with xshell.

Create a Virtual machine(Database server) [Disable public ip]

As this server don’t have any public ip, so we can’t able to connect it directly

We can access it through another server which will be in the same network..
lets try to connect it inside a web server..

as you can see that web server acts like an jump server.

Here we are going to install apache server

apt install apache2

We can use Github commands to clone our website code from our repo ,so You need to install git.

apt install git -y

we have to clone that repo to our web server folder name [ html ] as follow

[In case if we stop and start our server , we need start our apache again , to avoid this we can simply enable that server]

Now paste the public ip in the browser and you will see your website.[Not fully secure]

How to attach a domain name

you require a free or purchased domain to fully complete all the steps. If you already have a domain, then awesome, if not, don’t worry, you can get a free domain! You can visit the following site and get yourself a free domain.

https://www.freenom.com/en/index.html?lang=en

Once you sort out your domain, you should go back to the Azure console and navigate to the AZURE DNS service.

Create a DNS zone

Azure DNS is a hosting service for DNS domains that provides name resolution by using Microsoft Azure infrastructure.
By hosting your domains in Azure, you can manage your DNS records by using the same credentials, APIs, tools, and billing as your other Azure.

You have to make sure to enter the exact domain name as shown below

After that put this name server inside your domain name server [freenom]

You can alse add a record set as shown below.

Now our domain is fully binds with our public ip.

But its not Secure

How To Secure Apache with Let’s Encrypt on Ubuntu.

Let’s Encrypt is a Certificate Authority (CA) that gives a simple method to acquire and introduce free TLS/SSL declarations, along these lines empowering encoded HTTPS on web servers.
It rearranges the procedure by giving a product customer, Certbot, that endeavors to mechanize most (if not the entirety) of the necessary advances.

Step 1: Update System

sudo apt-get update

Step 2: Install Certbot

sudo certbot --apache -d cloud167.ml -d www.cloud167.ml

Its auto verify the domain and its will create all required files to configure in virtualhost ssl parameter, After installation and configuration, You will get the successful message, Now you can access with yours domain like this.