75 lines
3.4 KiB
Plaintext
75 lines
3.4 KiB
Plaintext
---
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layout: docs
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page_title: Vault as the Service Mesh Certificate Provider on Kubernetes
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description: >-
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Using Vault as the provider for the Service Mesh certificates on Kubernetes.
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---
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# Vault as the Service Mesh Certificate Provider on Kubernetes
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-> **Note:** This feature requires Consul 1.11 or higher. As of v1.11,
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Consul allows using Kubernetes auth methods to configure Connect CA.
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This allows for automatic token rotation once the renewal is no longer possible.
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In order to create Vault auth roles for the Consul servers for this feature, ensure that the Vault Kubernetes auth method is enabled as described in [Vault Kubernetes Auth Method](/docs/k8s/installation/vault#vault-kubernetes-auth-method).
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To configure [Vault as the provider](/docs/connect/ca/vault) for the Consul service certificates,
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you will first need to decide on the type of policy that is suitable for you.
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To see the permissions that Consul would need in Vault, please see [Vault ACL policies](/docs/connect/ca/vault#vault-acl-policies)
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documentation.
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Once you have a policy, you will need to link that policy to the Consul server service account.
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```shell-session
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vault write auth/kubernetes/role/consul-server \
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bound_service_account_names=<Consul server service account> \
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bound_service_account_namespaces=<Consul installation namespace> \
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policies=<Connect CA policy> \
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ttl=1h
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```
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To find out the service account name of the Consul server,
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you can run:
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```shell-session
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helm template --release-name <your release name> -s templates/server-serviceaccount.yaml hashicorp/consul
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```
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Now we can configure the Consul Helm chart to use Vault as the Connect CA provider:
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```yaml
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global:
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secretsBackend:
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vault:
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enabled: true
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consulServerRole: consul-server
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consulClientRole: consul-client
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consulCARole: consul-ca
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connectCA:
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address: <the address of the Vault server>
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rootPKIPath: <the path to root PKI>
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intermediatePKIPath: <the path to intermediate PKI>
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ca:
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secretName: <vaultCASecret>
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```
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The `address` you provide to the `connectCA` configuration can be a Kubernetes DNS
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address if the Vault cluster is running the same Kubernetes cluster.
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The `rootPKIPath` and `intermediatePKIPath` should be the same as the ones
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defined in your Connect CA policy. Behind the scenes, Consul will authenticate to Vault using a Kubernetes
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service account using the [Kubernetes auth method](https://www.vaultproject.io/docs/auth/kubernetes) and will use the Vault token for any API calls to Vault. If the Vault token can not be renewed, Consul will re-authenticate to
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generate a new Vault token.
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The `vaultCASecret` is the Kubernetes secret that stores the CA Certificate that is used for Vault communication. To provide a CA, you first need to create a Kubernetes secret containing the CA. For example, you may create a secret with the Vault CA like so:
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```
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kubectl create secret generic vault-ca --from-file vault.ca=/path/to/your/vault/ca
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```
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### Secondary Datacenters
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To configure Vault as the Connect CA in secondary datacenters, you need to make sure that the Root CA path is the same,
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but the intermediate is different for each datacenter. In the `connectCA` Helm configuration for a secondary datacenter,
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you can specify a `intermediatePKIPath` that is, for example, prefixed with the datacenter
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for which this configuration is intended (e.g. `dc2/connect-intermediate`).
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