open-vault/website/source/docs/secrets/consul/index.html.md

layout	page_title	sidebar_title	sidebar_current	description
docs	Consul - Secrets Engines	Consul	docs-secrets-consul	The Consul secrets engine for Vault generates tokens for Consul dynamically.

Consul Secrets Engine

The Consul secrets engine generates Consul API tokens dynamically based on Consul ACL policies.

Setup

Most secrets engines must be configured in advance before they can perform their functions. These steps are usually completed by an operator or configuration management tool.

1. Enable the Consul secrets engine:

   $ vault secrets enable consul
   Success! Enabled the consul secrets engine at: consul/
   

   By default, the secrets engine will mount at the name of the engine. To enable the secrets engine at a different path, use the -path argument.

2. Acquire a management token from Consul, using the acl_master_token from your Consul configuration file or another management token:

   $ curl \
       --header "X-Consul-Token: my-management-token" \
       --request PUT \
       --data '{"Name": "sample", "Type": "management"}' \
       https://consul.rocks/v1/acl/create
   

   Vault must have a management type token so that it can create and revoke ACL tokens. The response will return a new token:

   {
     "ID": "7652ba4c-0f6e-8e75-5724-5e083d72cfe4"
   }
   

3. Configure Vault to connect and authenticate to Consul:

   $ vault write consul/config/access \
       address=127.0.0.1:8500 \
       token=7652ba4c-0f6e-8e75-5724-5e083d72cfe4
   Success! Data written to: consul/config/access
   

4. Configure a role that maps a name in Vault to a Consul ACL policy. When users generate credentials, they are generated against this role:

   $ vault write consul/roles/my-role policy=$(base64 <<< 'key "" { policy = "read" }')
   Success! Data written to: consul/roles/my-role
   

   The policy must be base64-encoded. The policy language is documented by Consul.

Usage

After the secrets engine is configured and a user/machine has a Vault token with the proper permission, it can generate credentials.

Generate a new credential by reading from the /creds endpoint with the name of the role:

$ vault read consul/creds/my-role
Key                Value
---                -----
lease_id           consul/creds/my-role/b2469121-f55f-53c5-89af-a3ba52b1d6d8
lease_duration     768h
lease_renewable    true
token              642783bf-1540-526f-d4de-fe1ac1aed6f0

API

The Consul secrets engine has a full HTTP API. Please see the Consul secrets engine API for more details.