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Kubernetes – Secrets

Secrets can be defined as Kubernetes objects used to store sensitive data such as user name and passwords with encryption.

There are multiple ways of creating secrets in Kubernetes.

  • Creating from txt files.
  • Creating from yaml file.

Creating From Text File

In order to create secrets from a text file such as user name and password, we first need to store them in a txt file and use the following command.

$ kubectl create secret generic tomcat-passwd –-from-file = ./username.txt –fromfile = ./.
password.txt

Creating From Yaml File

apiVersion: v1
kind: Secret
metadata:
name: tomcat-pass
type: Opaque
data:
   password: <User Password>
   username: <User Name>

Creating the Secret

$ kubectl create –f Secret.yaml
secrets/tomcat-pass

Using Secrets

Once we have created the secrets, it can be consumed in a pod or the replication controller as −

  • Environment Variable
  • Volume

As Environment Variable

In order to use the secret as environment variable, we will use env under the spec section of pod yaml file.

env:
- name: SECRET_USERNAME
   valueFrom:
      secretKeyRef:
         name: mysecret
         key: tomcat-pass

As Volume

spec:
   volumes:
      - name: "secretstest"
         secret:
            secretName: tomcat-pass
   containers:
      - image: tomcat:7.0
         name: awebserver
         volumeMounts:
            - mountPath: "/tmp/mysec"
            name: "secretstest"

Secret Configuration As Environment Variable

apiVersion: v1
kind: ReplicationController
metadata:
   name: appname
spec:
replicas: replica_count
template:
   metadata:
      name: appname
   spec:
      nodeSelector:
         resource-group:
      containers:
         - name: appname
            image:
            imagePullPolicy: Always
            ports:
            - containerPort: 3000
            env: -----------------------------> 1
               - name: ENV
                  valueFrom:
                     configMapKeyRef:
                        name: appname
                        key: tomcat-secrets

In the above code, under the env definition, we are using secrets as environment variable in the replication controller.

Secrets As Volume Mount

apiVersion: v1
kind: pod
metadata:
   name: appname
spec:
   metadata:
      name: appname
   spec:
   volumes:
      - name: "secretstest"
         secret:
            secretName: tomcat-pass
   containers:
      - image: tomcat: 8.0
         name: awebserver
         volumeMounts:
            - mountPath: "/tmp/mysec"
            name: "secretstest"

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