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Kubernetes TLS Config

This is my post install on a fresh k3s kubernetes cluster on Hetzner cloud.
I used the excellent Kube-Hetzner terraform setup for Hetzner Cloud and performed the following post config to setup TLS and deploy a secure WHOAMI sample application.

Issuing Certificates

There are four main alternatives to issue certificates on kubernetes with Traefik Proxy.

  1. Cloud provider's load balancer - may have support to manage certificates.
    This option is not standard, will vary between cloud providers with proprietary APIs.

  2. Traefik --certificatesresolvers declared in Traefik additionalArguments: configuration section.
    This a popular approach where:

    • Certificates resolvers are declared only once per the cluster.
    • Can be requested by an Ingress resource in the annotations: section refering to router.tls.certresolver and certificate definitions in tls.hosts and tls.secretName entries.
    • Can be requested by an IngressRoute resource without annotations. Everything goes in the tls section, in tls.certResolver, tls.domains and tls.options attributes.

    The downside:

    • Won't work with multiple instances of Traefik (HA) as there is no way to ensure the correct instance receives the challenge request and subsequent responses.
    • Certificate resolvers configurations are mixed with the static configuration of Traefik Proxy.

  3. Cert-Manager with Ingress to manage certificates automatically. This is another popular solution that:

    • Cert-Manager is not affected by Traefik HA.
    • Separates certificate management configuration from Traefik Proxy configuration.
    • Has full integration for Ingress resources since Cert-Manager "understands" Ingress resources. Cert-Manager will create temporary challenge response services being able to issue the certificate by the Ingress resource request.

    The downside:

    • Cert-Mangager does not integregate with IngressRoute resources. There is a gap here, IngressRoute integrates with Traefik certificateresolvers but not with Cert-Manager to auto issue certificates. Certificates must be requested either by an Ingress or by a Certificate resource.

  4. Cert-Manager with manual first issue that manages certificates renewal.
    This is the approach I like best and is the one described in this document.

    • Cert-Manager is not affected by Traefik HA.
    • Separates certificate management configuration from Traefik Proxy configuration.
    • Compatible with Ingress resources without annotations (or optional annotation to use HTTPS only).
    • Compatible with IngressRoute.
    • Although certificate issue is manual it is therefore manually verified.
    • Although certificate issue is manual, renewal is automatic.

    The downside:

    • First issue of a certificate is manual (but easy).

As mentioned above I do prefer to user Cert-Manager and issue the certificate for HTTPS manually and have the benefit of automatic renewal and use only IngressRoute CRD rosources. This document will walk you through the configurations necessary to use this approach.

#0. Before anything you need to have your domain pointing to your cluster external IP.

This documentation requires that your DNS is already configured.

In the example we will also redirect www.domain URLs to their short domain equivalent. It is required that www and root addresses are both mapped in your DNS configuration, and it is OK to use the general *.domain CNAME for this.

On the other hand, when requesting a certificate with http challenge solvers every domain should be explicity defined (*.domain is only supported through dns challenge solvers).

Chapter #1 - Create Cluster Issuers

Issuers is your CA representation. In this document we will be issuing LetsEncrypt certificates (staging and production), this the Issuer will be a service to interact with LetsEncrypt authority.

Cluster Issuers only differ from regular Issuer in the fact that they have no namespace and will be shared by IngressRoutes on all namespaces.

Instructions in Chapter 01-cluster-issuer.

Chapter #2 - whoami app

Install the kute whoami webserver from Traefik dockerhub. This version may be configured to produce an ASCII message for the console.

This example installation goes step by step from issuing a letsencrypt staging certificate up to deploying the websecure application using Traefik CRD provider with production certificates and a set of middlewares for HTTP redirection, SSL strong security and 'www' prefix stripping.

Instructions in Chapter #2 - whoami.

References

This document is a compilation of best practices and instructions collected on the internet. Here I name some of the main resources I used to create this repository.