Progress Report: openDesk Edu Production Update — June 2026

A comprehensive service suite with unified SSO. Keycloak clients audited and migrated. k8up backups active, Grafana dashboards deployed, and all ingresses consolidated under a single domain.

Since deploying openDesk Edu on the production cluster (K3s v1.32.3, 9 nodes, Debian 12), we've completed two focused hardening sprints (Sprints 5–6) targeting operational stability, domain consolidation, and service health.

Cluster at a Glance

Metric	Value
Cluster	K3s v1.32.3, 9 nodes (3 CP, 6 workers)
Domain	*.opendesk-edu.org
Ingress	HAProxy controller (192.168.3.201)
Storage	Ceph RBD SSD (RWO), CephFS HDD EC (RWX)
SSO	Keycloak OIDC + SAML, 44 clients
Backups	k8up / restic → S3, daily at 01:22, 14d retention
Monitoring	Prometheus + Grafana (12.4.1)

What Was Fixed

SSO Audit (Sprint 5)

All 44 Keycloak clients in the opendesk realm were audited and consolidated onto the opendesk-edu.org domain. Every client URI, redirect URL, and issuer was verified via the Keycloak admin API.

Domain Migration

Twelve ingresses (3 portal, 9 static-files) were consolidated onto the *.opendesk-edu.org domain. The source of the hardcoded old domain — portal-saml-multidomain.yaml.gotmpl — was fixed at the chart level and committed.

Service Repairs

Service	Issue	Fix
Planka	Ingress class nginx (no controller), OIDC endpoints contained unrendered .gotmpl template syntax	Patched to haproxy, OIDC URLs set via --set
SSP	Ingress backend pointed to nonexistent service name	Chart template was already fixed; upgrade applied
Planka chart	values.yaml had helmfile .gotmpl expressions that break direct helm deployments	Replaced with empty strings; endpoints set at deploy time

Infrastructure

• k8up operator deployed in the opendesk namespace. Backup schedule backup-edu runs daily at 01:22 with 14-day retention. 33 snapshots confirmed in S3.
• Grafana dashboards deployed for edu service health, k8up backup overview, and cluster overview.
• External DNS — script generated for 12 services still relying on /etc/hosts resolution (n8n, code, collab, draw, jupyter, limesurvey, typo3, zammad, r, slides, term, ai).

Current Service Health

All core services respond correctly:

Service	Endpoint	Status
Moodle LMS	moodle.opendesk-edu.org	✅ 200
ILIAS LMS	lms.opendesk-edu.org	✅ 200
JupyterHub	jupyter.opendesk-edu.org	✅ 302 (SSO redirect)
BookStack	bookstack.opendesk-edu.org	✅ 302 (SSO redirect)
OpenProject	projects.opendesk-edu.org	✅ 302 (SSO redirect)
Element (Chat)	chat.opendesk-edu.org	✅ 200
Jitsi (Meet)	meet.opendesk-edu.org	✅ 200
Nextcloud (Files)	files.opendesk-edu.org	✅ 302 (SSO redirect)
OX App Suite (Mail)	webmail.opendesk-edu.org	✅ 302 (SSO redirect)
XWiki	wiki.opendesk-edu.org	✅ 302 (SSO redirect)
Planka	planka.opendesk-edu.org	✅ 200 with OIDC
SSP	ssp.opendesk-edu.org	✅ 403/200 (OIDC auth)

Upstream Integration into openDesk Cluster

On 1 June, all 20+ opendesk-edu services were upstreamed into the main openDesk cluster deployment. The edu service charts, values, and configuration are now part of the openDesk helmfile pipeline — deploying alongside core openDesk infrastructure and sharing the same ingress controller, monitoring stack, and backup schedules.

Services integrated:

Type	Services
Local charts	Etherpad, BookStack, Planka, Zammad, LimeSurvey, Draw.io, Excalidraw, Self-Service-Password, SOGo, RStudio, ttyd, Slidev, Collab Dashboard, Portal Entries
External charts	JupyterHub, Open WebUI, Code-Server, Dask, Ollama
Skipped (auth pending)	Overleaf, KasmVNC, TYPO3, Grommunio

This integration eliminates the separate opendesk-edu namespace and brings edu services under unified cluster management — the same Grafana dashboards, the same k8up backup retention policies, the same HAProxy ingress rules. The opendesk-edu repository remains the source of truth for edu-specific chart values and documentation, but runtime deployment now lives in the main openDesk pipeline.

Roadmap Outlook

With the hardening sprints complete and upstream integration in progress, the focus now shifts to:

1. External DNS resolution — hand the generated DNS record script to the network team to remove /etc/hosts dependency for 12 services
2. Helmfile pipeline — target helmfile sync at the main openDesk cluster (no longer the separate opendesk-edu namespace); the upstream merge on 1 June has already laid the groundwork
3. Full login testing — end-to-end OIDC/SAML flow validation for all services
4. v1.1 Foundation items — DFN-AAI SAML federation testing, container image build pipeline, backchannel logout verification, remaining auth-pending chart integrations

Want to deploy openDesk Edu at your university? See our getting started guide and repository.