dhi.io/external-secrets-chart
External Secrets Operator Helm chart
External Secrets Operator is a Kubernetes operator that integrates external secret management systems like AWS Secrets Manager, HashiCorp Vault, Google Secrets Manager, Azure Key Vault, IBM Cloud Secrets Manager, Akeyless, CyberArk Secrets Manager, Pulumi ESC and many more
Installing the chart
Prerequisites
- Kubernetes 1.19+
Installation steps
All examples in this guide use the public chart and images. If you've mirrored the repository for your own use (for example, to your Docker Hub namespace), update your commands to reference the mirrored chart instead of the public one.
For example:
- Public chart:
dhi.io/<repository>:<tag> - Mirrored chart:
<your-namespace>/dhi-<repository>:<tag>
For more details about customizing the chart to reference other images, see the documentation.
Step 1: Optional. Mirror the Helm chart and/or its images to your own registry
To optionally mirror a chart to your own third-party registry, you can follow the instructions in How to mirror an image for either the chart, the image, or both.
The same regctl tool that is used for mirroring container images can also be used for mirroring Helm charts, as Helm
charts are OCI artifacts.
For example:
regctl image copy \
"${SRC_CHART_REPO}:${TAG}" \
"${DEST_REG}/${DEST_CHART_REPO}:${TAG}" \
--referrers \
--referrers-src "${SRC_ATT_REPO}" \
--referrers-tgt "${DEST_REG}/${DEST_CHART_REPO}" \
--force-recursive
Step 2: Create a Kubernetes secret for pulling images
The Docker Hardened Images that the chart uses require authentication. To allow your Kubernetes cluster to pull those images, you need to create a Kubernetes secret with your Docker Hub credentials or with the credentials for your own registry.
Follow the authentication instructions for DHI in Kubernetes.
For example:
kubectl create secret docker-registry helm-pull-secret \
--docker-server=dhi.io \
--docker-username=<Docker username> \
--docker-password=<Docker token> \
--docker-email=<Docker email>
Step 3: Install the Helm chart
To install the chart, use helm install. Make sure you use helm login to log in before running helm install.
Optionally, you can also use the --dry-run flag to test the installation without actually installing anything.
helm install my-external-secrets oci://dhi.io/external-secrets-chart --version <version> \
--set "imagePullSecrets[0].name=helm-pull-secret" \
Replace <version> accordingly. If the chart is in your own registry or repository, replace dhi.io with your own
registry and namespace. Replace helm-pull-secret with the name of the image pull secret you created earlier.
Step 4: Verify the installation
The deployment's pod should show up and running almost immediately:
$ kubectl get pods -n external-secrets
NAME READY STATUS RESTARTS AGE
my-external-secrets-external-secrets-chart-976db967f-d2kng 1/1 Running 0 15s
my-external-secrets-external-secrets-chart-cert-controller-lwqq6 1/1 Running 0 15s
my-external-secrets-external-secrets-chart-webhook-5f47ccdcxdr6t 1/1 Running 0 15s
The simplest way to test the operator is to create a secret using their internal test provider. First we create the CRDs.
$ cat > clustersecretstore-fake.yaml << 'EOF'
# clustersecretstore-fake.yaml
apiVersion: external-secrets.io/v1
kind: ClusterSecretStore
metadata:
name: fake
spec:
provider:
fake:
data:
- key: "/foo/bar"
value: "HELLO1"
version: "v1"
- key: "/foo/baz"
value: '{"john":"doe"}'
version: "v1"
EOF
$ cat > externalsecret-fake.yaml << 'EOF'
# externalsecret-fake.yaml
apiVersion: external-secrets.io/v1
kind: ExternalSecret
metadata:
name: example
spec:
refreshInterval: 1h
secretStoreRef:
name: fake
kind: ClusterSecretStore
target:
name: secret-to-be-created
data:
- secretKey: foo_bar
remoteRef:
key: /foo/bar
version: v1
dataFrom:
- extract:
key: /foo/baz
version: v1
EOF
Send those to the cluster:
$ kubectl apply -f clustersecretstore-fake.yaml -f externalsecret-fake.yaml
Warning: store fake isn't currently maintained. Plan and prepare accordingly.
clustersecretstore.external-secrets.io/fake created
externalsecret.external-secrets.io/example created
And after a few seconds we should have the Kubernetes Secret ready to be used.
$ kubectl get Secret secret-to-be-created
NAME TYPE DATA AGE
secret-to-be-created Opaque 2 58s
$ kubectl get Secret secret-to-be-created --template={{.data.foo_bar}} | base64 -d
HELLO1