How Do I Request Public Access to a Spinup-Hosted Web Application?

By default, applications and websites hosted in Spinup are private to the Yale network. To expose your service to the internet or make it accessible across campus, you’ll need to request load balancer access through IT.

This guide walks you through the process of making your application publicly accessible, including prerequisites, approvals, and best practices.

When Do I Need to Follow This Process?

• You want your website or application accessible to the public internet

• You need HTTPS (TLS) termination for a container service or VM-hosted application

• You require a custom yale.edu domain.

Step 1: Complete a Security Planning Assessment (SPA)

All public-facing applications must undergo a Security Planning Assessment (SPA), even when hosted in Spinup. This is required under Yale’s Minimum Security Standards.

Step 2: Request Domain Approval (If Applicable)

If your application will use:

• A *.yale.edu domain — contact the YaleSites team

• A *.medicine.yale.edu domain — contact the YSM Office of Communications

You’ll need to include the approval email from YaleSites or YSM when submitting your load balancer request.

Step 3: Submit a Load Balancer Request

Once the SPA and domain approvals are complete:

1. Open a request in ServiceNow

2. Fill out the form as follows:

   • What type of issue are you reporting? → Infrastructure Platforms

   • Please describe what this references → Load Balancing

   • Short Description → e.g. Spinup Load Balancer for myapp.yale.edu

   • Description should include:

     • Name of the application or site

     • Purpose of the application

     • NetID of the owner

     • Name of the Spinup container or server

     • SPA ticket number

     • Copy of domain approval from YaleSites (and YSM, if applicable)

Step 4: Prepare Your Application for HTTPS

While your request is being processed, configure your application to listen on ports 80 (HTTP) and 443 (HTTPS).

If using Nginx as a reverse proxy, you can follow this guide as an example setup:
Configuring NGINX for Spinup Load Balancers

Hosting Guidelines & Policies

Please review these terms when serving public websites through Spinup:

1. No PHI or confidential data. Protected Health Information, SSNs, and credit card numbers are strictly prohibited.

2. Web accessibility is required. Follow Yale’s Web Accessibility Policy.

3. Follow Yale branding standards. Review Yale’s Identity Guidelines before using logos or colors.

4. Content must comply with Yale standards.

   • See Copyright Policy

   • See Standards of Business Conduct

5. Public access is public. Unless restricted, any material served is visible to all users and can be indexed by search engines.

Questions?

• Email: spinup@yale.edu

• Slack: #spinup channel