KKP 2.17+ allows to configure a “CA bundle” (a set of CA certificates) on the master cluster. This CA bundle is then automatically
kube-system namespace)Changes to the CA bundle are automatically reconciled across these locations. If the CA bundle is invalid, no further reconciliation happens, so if the master cluster’s CA bundle breaks, seed clusters are not affected.
Do note that the CA bundle configured in KKP is usually the only source of CA certificates for all of these components, meaning that no certificates are mounted from any of the Seed cluster host systems.
KKP uses cert-manager for managing all TLS certificates used for KKP itself, as well as Dex and the Identity-Aware Proxies (IAP). The default configuration sets up Certificate Issuers for Let’s Encrypt, but other issuers can be configured as well. This section describes the various options for using a custom CA: using cert-manager or managing certificates manually outside of the cluster.
cert-manager offers a CA Issuer that can automatically create and sign certificates inside the cluster. This requires that the CA itself is stored inside the cluster as a Kubernetes Secret, so care must be taken to prevent unauthorized access (e.g. by setting up proper RBAC rules).
If having the CA certificate and key inside the cluster is not a problem, this approach is recommended, as it introduces the least friction and can be achieved rather easily.
Currently the cert-manager Helm chart that is part of KKP does not support creating non-ACME
ClusterIssuers (i.e ClusterIssuers that do not use Let’s Encrypt). New issuers must therefore be
created manually. Please follow the description in
the cert-manager documentation.
Once the new ClusterIssuer has been created, KKP and the IAP need to be adjusted to use the new issuer.
For KKP, update the KubermaticConfiguration and configure spec.ingress.certificateIssuer accordingly:
spec:
ingress:
certificateIssuer:
kind: ClusterIssuer # or Issuer, depending on your scenario.
name: my-own-ca-issuer
Re-apply the changed configuration and the KKP Operator will reconcile the Certificate resource, after which cert-manager will provision a new certificate Secret.
Similarly, update your Helm values.yaml that is used for the Dex/IAP deployment and configure
the new issuer:
dex:
certIssuer:
kind: ClusterIssuer # or Issuer, depending on your scenario.
name: my-own-ca-issuer
iap:
certIssuer:
kind: ClusterIssuer # or Issuer, depending on your scenario.
name: my-own-ca-issuer
Re-deploy the iap Helm chart to perform the changes and update the Certificate resources.
If issuing certificates inside the cluster is not possible, static certificates can also be provided. The cluster admin is responsible for renewing and updating them as needed. Going forward, it is assumed that proper certificates have already been created and now need to be configured inside the cluster.
The CA bundle is stored as a single ConfigMap in the kubermatic namespace on the master cluster.
It needs to have a ca-bundle.pem key, which is simply the collection of all PEM-encoded CA
certificates.
A good source for a general purpose CA bundle is Mozilla’s CA database. The curl maintainers
provide a ready-to-use bundle file that can be used as
a starting point and then extended with your own CAs.
KKP ships the CA bundle mentioned above by default in the kubermatic-operator Helm chart.
This means that after installing KKP, a usable default CA bundle is available right from the
start.
To override the CA bundle, either overwrite the static/ca-bundle.pem file in the
kubermatic-operator Helm chart with your own and then helm upgrade the operator, or manually
change the ConfigMap later using kubectl edit. Note that you should not use Helm and kubectl
to manage your CA bundle, but only one of the two.
Changes to the ConfigMap are picked up automatically and are then reconciled.
A typical CA bundle ConfigMap must look like this:
apiVersion: v1
kind: ConfigMap
metadata:
name: ca-bundle
namespace: kubermatic
data:
# The key must be "ca-bundle.pem".
ca-bundle.pem: |
GlobalSign Root CA
==================
-----BEGIN CERTIFICATE-----
MIIDdTCCAl2gAwIBAgILBAAAAAABFUtaw5QwDQYJKoZIhvcNAQEFBQAwVzELMAkGA1UEBhMCQkUx
GTAXBgNVBAoTEEdsb2JhbFNpZ24gbnYtc2ExEDAOBgNVBAsTB1Jvb3QgQ0ExGzAZBgNVBAMTEkds
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X4XSQRjbgbMEHMUfpIBvFSDJ3gyICh3WZlXi/EjJKSZp4A==
-----END CERTIFICATE-----
GlobalSign Root CA - R2
=======================
-----BEGIN CERTIFICATE-----
MIIDujCCAqKgAwIBAgILBAAAAAABD4Ym5g0wDQYJKoZIhvcNAQEFBQAwTDEgMB4GA1UECxMXR2xv
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-----END CERTIFICATE-----
.... more certificates ....
The CA bundle needs to be configured in the KubermaticConfiguration. By default
the configuration refers to the ca-bundle ConfigMap that is shipped with the
kubermatic-operator Helm chart; if you need to use a different ConfigMap, adjust
the spec.caBundle settings:
apiVersion: kubermatic.k8c.io/v1
kind: KubermaticConfiguration
metadata:
name: kubermatic
namespace: kubermatic
spec:
# This configures the global default CA bundle, which is used on the
# master cluster and on all seeds, userclusters.
caBundle:
kind: ConfigMap
# name of the ConfigMap;
# must be in the same namespace as KKP
name: ca-bundle
The KKP Operator manages a single Ingress for the KKP API/dashboard. This by default includes setting up the required annotations and spec settings for usage with cert-manager. However, if the cert-manager integration is disabled, the cluster admin is free to manage these settings themselves.
To disable cert-manager integration, set spec.ingress.certificateIssuer as empty
in the KubermaticConfiguration or omit setting the field entirely:
spec:
ingress:
certificateIssuer: null
It is now possible to set spec.tls on the kubermatic Ingress to a custom certificate:
spec:
tls:
- secretName: my-custom-kubermatic-cert
hosts:
- kubermatic.example.com
Refer to the Kubernetes documentation for details on the format for certificate Secrets.
KKP automatically synchronizes the relevant CA bundle into each user cluster. The ConfigMap
is called ca-bundle and created in the kube-system namespace. For this reason it’s important
to not put actual secrets into the CA bundle.
The same technique used for KKP is applicable to Dex as well: Set the name of the cert issuer to an empty
string to be able to configure your own certificates. Update the Helm values.yaml used to deploy the
chart like so:
dex:
certIssuer:
name: ""
Re-deploy the chart and the Certificate resource will not be created anymore. You have to manually create
a dex-tls Secret in Dex’s namespace. This Secret follows the
same format as the one for KKP’s API.
The configuration is identical to Dex: Disable the cert issuer’s name and then manually create the TLS certificates.
iap:
certIssuer:
name: ""
For each configured Deployment (iap.deployments) a matching Secret needs to be created. For a Deployment
named grafana, the Secret needs to be called grafana-tls.
Both the KKP API and the OAuth-Proxy from the IAP need to validate the OAuth tokens (generated by Dex, by default). If the the token issuer uses a custom CA, this CA needs to be configured for KKP and all IAPs.
In both cases, the full certificate chain (including intermediates) needs to be configured.
The token issuer (not to be confused with a cert-manager certificate issuer) is configured in the
KubermaticConfiguration and by default requires a valid certificate. The required adjustments for this
are the same for custom internal or external CA’s.
spec:
auth:
tokenIssuer: https://example.com/dex
# this should never be enabled in production environments
skipTokenIssuerTLSVerify: false
If the certificate used for Dex is not issued by a CA that is trusted by default (e.g. Let’s Encrypt), the issuing CA’s certificate chain needs to be set via a Custom CA.
Do note that if the OIDC Endpoint Feature is enabled in KKP, this CA bundle is also configured for the Kubernetes apiserver, so that it can also validate the tokens issued by Dex.
The certificate chain can be put into a Kubernetes Secret and then be referred to from the values.yaml.
Create a Secret inside the IAP’s namespace (iap by default) and then update your values.yaml like so:
iap:
customProviderCA:
secretName: my-ca-secret
secretKey: ca.crt
Re-deploy the iap Helm chart to apply the changes.
Generally the KKP stack is built to use dedicated certificates for each Ingress / application, but it’s possible to instead configure a single (usually wildcard) certificate in nginx that will be used as the default certificate for all domains.
As with all other custom certificates, create a new Secret with the certificate and private key in it,
and then adjust your Helm values.yaml to configure nginx like so:
nginx:
controller:
extraArgs:
# The value of this flag is in the form "namespace/name".
default-ssl-certificate: "mynamespace/mysecret'
Redeploy the nginx-ingress-controller Helm chart to enable the changes.