k8s-cert-manager-opensearch

Demo of Opensearch deployment in k8s with cert manager and self-signed ca certificate

In the below demo you will see:

• Deployment of Cert Manager in k8s
• Deployment of Ingress Controller and Resource
• Creation of self signed CA using cert manager
• Creation of cert manager certificates signed by selfsigned CA
• Deployment of Opensearch/Dashboards using helm
• Generation of certificates using Let's Encrypt
• Deployment of Opensearch/Dashboards with Let's Encryt certificates

Technologies used:

• EKS Cluster
• Route53
• Cert-Manager
• ingress-nginx
• helm

Set up the cluster:

eksctl create cluster \
--name test-cluster \
--region eu-west-1 \
--nodegroup-name linux-nodes \
--node-type t2.medium \
--nodes 3

N.B. Command to delete cluster (Note the PV remains on AWS and will accumulate charges if not deleted)

• eksctl delete cluster --name test-cluster

---

1. Install cert-manager

 kubectl create namespace cert-manager
 helm repo add jetstack https://charts.jetstack.io
 helm repo update
 helm install cert-manager jetstack/cert-manager --namespace cert-manager --version v1.7.0 --set installCRDs=true

---

2. Install Ingress Controller

helm install ing ingress-nginx/ingress-nginx \
  --namespace ingress \
  --version 4.0.1 \
  --values ingress_controller.yaml \
  --create-namespace

Update Route53

After a couple of seconds below command should display External address in a form of domain, update your route53 records accordingly (with Type A record)

kubectl get svc -n ingress

---

3. Install ingress resource

kubectl apply -f ingress.yaml

kubectl get ing

---

4. Create self signed CA

kubectl apply -f example-1

Examine the created certificates

kubectl get secret -n cert-manager
kubectl get secret ca-key-pair -o yaml -n cert-manager

---

5. Create certificates from the self signed CA that was just created by Cert Manager

kubectl apply -f example-2

Examine the created certificates

kubectl get secret
kubectl get secret tls-for-dashboards-key-pair -o yaml

---

6. Deploy Opensearch using helm and the created certificates

cd charts/opensearch
helm package .
helm install --values=values.yaml opensearch opensearch-1.7.1.tgz

Make sure the 3 pods are running

kubectl get pod

---

7. Deploy Dashboards

cd ../opensearch-dashboards/
helm package .
helm install --values=values.yaml dashboards opensearch-dashboards-1.2.0.tgz

Make sure the logs indicate that the service is running on https://0.0.0.0:5601

kubectl logs dashboards-opensearch-dashboards

Check the result

Now connect to your domain in browser (Recommend to use Firefox as the certificates are not trusted by browser, as they are signed by self-signed CA unknown to browser)

test-domain.co.uk

8. Create Let's encrypt certificates

First clear up any certificates and secrets created from previous steps:

helm delete dashboards
helm delete opensearch
kubectl delete -f example-2
kubectl delete -f example-1

Delete any secrets, so that only below is left:

kubectl get secret

NAME                                       TYPE                                  DATA   AGE
default-token-sdzvh                        kubernetes.io/service-account-token   3      11m

Apply the new clusterIssuer and certificates files together with additional secrets needed by Opensearch Dashboards

kubectl apply -f lets_encrypt/.

9. Redeploy Opensearch/Dashboards using helm

Perform steps 6 and 7, however this time using new charts located in lets_encrypt/charts directory.

Notice the differences with tls.crt file in opensearch config and initContainer in Opensearch Dashboards config.