Hey folks - I'm trying to get prefect server set up on google cloud compute. i'm looking through the tutorials on youtube and medium - I'm confused why the graphql url has to be the external IP. if you're just running on one node couldn't it just be on localhost? also, any instructions/tips on how to secure an instance? I could connect to the ui through an ssh tunnel but I'd rather not have anything publicly accessible if I can help it

Hi @Chris Goddard - I'll let the community chime in on the security question, there are a few people that have come up with some clever solutions on that front (which should be searchable in this channel and the #prefect-community channel). To your first question, there's no need for an external IP address. The important piece is that whatever environment from which you're registering your flows and viewing your UI should have access to the GraphQL API. The UI in particular is an application which is normally executed within the context of your local browser; in that instance

localhost

is pointed to your local machine, even as it's served from a remote instance. So the application that's served from your instance needs to know that no matter where it's served (read: no matter whose browser), it should look for a Prefect Server API at the url that you've configured. However it's a little easier than that now, since the GraphQL url can be configured dynamically in the application after you've deployed. To do so, you can navigate to the

Home

page of the Server UI and enter the endpoint in the

Prefect Server GraphQL endpoint

input.

that's helpful - thank you