bitnamicharts/vault

Bitnami Secure Images Helm chart for HashiCorp Vault

Vault is a tool for securely managing and accessing secrets using a unified interface. Features secure storage, dynamic secrets, data encryption and revocation.

Overview of HashiCorp Vault

Trademarks: This software listing is packaged by Bitnami. The respective trademarks mentioned in the offering are owned by the respective companies, and use of them does not imply any affiliation or endorsement.

TL;DR

console
helm install my-release oci://REGISTRY_NAME/REPOSITORY_NAME/vault

Note: You need to substitute the placeholders REGISTRY_NAME and REPOSITORY_NAME with a reference to your Helm chart registry and repository.

Introduction

This chart bootstraps a https://github.com/bitnami/containers/tree/main/bitnami/vault deployment on a Kubernetes cluster using the Helm package manager.

Before you begin

• Kubernetes 1.23+
• Helm 3.8.0+
• PV provisioner support in the underlying infrastructure

Installing the chart

To install the chart with the release name my-release:

console
helm install my-release my-repo/vault

The command deploys Vault on the Kubernetes cluster in the default configuration. The Parameters section lists the parameters that can be configured during installation.

Note List all releases using helm list.

Configuration and installation details

This section describes resource settings, metrics, Gateway API, Ingress, TLS, and other options.

Resource requests and limits

Bitnami charts allow setting resource requests and limits for all containers inside the chart deployment. These are inside the resources value (check parameter table). Setting requests is essential for production workloads and these should be adapted to your specific use case.

To make this process easier, the chart contains the resourcesPreset values, which automatically sets the resources section according to different presets. Check these presets in https://github.com/bitnami/charts/blob/main/bitnami/common/templates/_resources.tpl#L15. However, in production workloads using resourcesPreset is discouraged as it may not fully adapt to your specific needs. Find more information on container resource management in the official Kubernetes documentation.

Prometheus metrics

This chart can be integrated with Prometheus by setting server.metrics.enabled to true. This will expose Vault native Prometheus endpoint in the service. It will have the necessary annotations to be automatically scraped by Prometheus.

Prometheus requirements

It is necessary to have a working installation of Prometheus or Prometheus Operator for the integration to work. Install the https://github.com/bitnami/charts/tree/main/bitnami/prometheus or the https://github.com/bitnami/charts/tree/main/bitnami/kube-prometheus to easily have a working Prometheus in your cluster.

Integration with Prometheus Operator

The chart can deploy ServiceMonitor objects for integration with Prometheus Operator installations. To do so, set the value server.metrics.serviceMonitor.enabled=true. Ensure that the Prometheus Operator CustomResourceDefinitions are installed in the cluster or it will fail with the following error:

text
no matches for kind "ServiceMonitor" in version "monitoring.coreos.com/v1"

Install the https://github.com/bitnami/charts/tree/main/bitnami/kube-prometheus for having the necessary CRDs and the Prometheus Operator.

Rolling vs immutable tags

It is strongly recommended to use immutable tags in a production environment. This ensures your deployment does not change automatically if the same tag is updated with a different image.

Bitnami will release a new chart updating its containers if a new version of the main container, significant changes, or critical vulnerabilities exist.

Gateway API

This chart provides support for exposing Vault Server using the Gateway API and its HTTPRoute resource. If you have a Gateway controller installed on your cluster, such as APISIX, Contour, Envoy Gateway, NGINX Gateway Fabric or Kong Ingress Controller you can utilize the Gateway controller to serve your application. To enable Gateway API integration, set server.httpRoute.enabled to true. The Gateway to be used can be customized by setting the server.httpRoute.parentRefs parameter. By default, it will reference a Gateway named gateway in the same namespace as the release.

You can specify the list of hostnames to be mapped to the deployment using the server.httpRoute.hostnames parameter. Additionally, you can customize the rules used to route the traffic to the service by modifying the server.httpRoute.matches and server.httpRoute.filters parameters or adding new rules using the server.httpRoute.extraRules parameter.

This chart also supports creating a BackendTLSPolicy to define the SNI the Gateway should use to connect to the Vault Server backend pods and how the certificate served by these pods should be verified. To do so, set the server.backendTLSPolicy.enabled parameter to true. Please note it's required to secure traffic using TLS as explained in the Securing traffic using TLS section to be able to use this feature.

Ingress

This chart provides support for Ingress resources. If you have an ingress controller installed on your cluster, such as https://github.com/bitnami/charts/tree/main/bitnami/nginx-ingress-controller or https://github.com/bitnami/charts/tree/main/bitnami/contour you can utilize the ingress controller to serve your application. To enable Ingress integration, set server.ingress.enabled to true.

The most common scenario is to have one host name mapped to the deployment. In this case, the server.ingress.hostname property can be used to set the host name. The server.ingress.tls parameter can be used to add the TLS configuration for this host.

However, it is also possible to have more than one host. To facilitate this, the server.ingress.extraHosts parameter (if available) can be set with the host names specified as an array. The server.ingress.extraTLS parameter (if available) can also be used to add the TLS configuration for extra hosts.

Note For each host specified in the server.ingress.extraHosts parameter, it is necessary to set a name, path, and any annotations that the Ingress controller should know about. Not all annotations are supported by all Ingress controllers, but https://github.com/kubernetes/ingress-nginx/blob/master/docs/user-guide/nginx-configuration/annotations.md lists the annotations supported by many popular Ingress controllers.

Adding the TLS parameter (where available) will cause the chart to generate HTTPS URLs, and the application will be available on port 443. The actual TLS secrets do not have to be generated by this chart. However, if TLS is enabled, the Ingress record will not work until the TLS secret exists.

Learn more about Ingress controllers.

Ingress TLS secrets

This chart facilitates the creation of TLS secrets for use with the Ingress controller (although this is not mandatory). There are several common use cases:

• Generate certificate secrets based on chart parameters.
• Enable externally generated certificates.
• Manage application certificates using an external service (like https://github.com/jetstack/cert-manager/).
• Create self-signed certificates within the chart (if supported).

In the first two cases, a certificate and a key are needed. Files are expected in .pem format.

Here is an example of a certificate file:

Note There may be more than one certificate if there is a certificate chain.

text
-----BEGIN CERTIFICATE-----
MIID6TCCAtGgAwIBAgIJAIaCwivkeB5EMA0GCSqGSIb3DQEBCwUAMFYxCzAJBgNV
...
jScrvkiBO65F46KioCL9h5tDvomdU1aqpI/CBzhvZn1c0ZTf87tGQR8NK7v7
-----END CERTIFICATE-----

Here is an example of a certificate key:

text
-----BEGIN RSA PRIVATE KEY-----
MIIEogIBAAKCAQEAvLYcyu8f3skuRyUgeeNpeDvYBCDcgq+LsWap6zbX5f8oLqp4
...
wrj2wDbCDCFmfqnSJ+dKI3vFLlEz44sAV8jX/kd4Y6ZTQhlLbYc=
-----END RSA PRIVATE KEY-----

• If using Helm to manage the certificates based on the parameters, copy these values into the certificate and key values for a given *.ingress.secrets entry.
• If managing TLS secrets separately, it is necessary to create a TLS secret with name INGRESS_HOSTNAME-tls (where INGRESS_HOSTNAME is a placeholder to be replaced with the host name you set using the *.ingress.hostname parameter).
• If your cluster has a https://github.com/jetstack/cert-manager add-on to automate the management and issuance of TLS certificates, add to *.ingress.annotations the corresponding ones for cert-manager.
• If using self-signed certificates created by Helm, set both *.ingress.tls and *.ingress.selfSigned to true.

Securing traffic using TLS

By default, this chart assumes TLS is managed by the Ingress Controller and terminates the TLS connection in the Ingress Controller. This can be done by setting ingress.enabled and ingress.tls parameters to true as explained in the section above. However, it is possible to configure TLS encryption for Vault server directly by setting server.tls.enabled parameter to true.

It is necessary to create a secret containing the TLS certificates and pass it to the chart using the server.tls.existingSecret parameter. The secret should contain a tls.crt and tls.key keys including the certificate and key files respectively.

You can manually create the required TLS certificates or relying on the chart auto-generation capabilities. The chart supports two different ways to auto-generate the required certificates:

• Using Helm capabilities. Enable this feature by setting server.tls.autoGenerated.enabled to true and server.tls.autoGenerated.engine to helm.
• Relying on cert-manager (please note it's required to have cert-manager installed in your K8s cluster). Enable this feature by setting server.tls.autoGenerated.enabled to true and server.tls.autoGenerated.engine to cert-manager. Please note it's supported to use an existing Issuer/ClusterIssuer for issuing the TLS certificates by setting the server.tls.autoGenerated.certManager.existingIssuer and server.tls.autoGenerated.certManager.existingIssuerKind parameters.

Additional environment variables

In case you want to add extra environment variables (useful for advanced operations like custom init scripts), you can use the extraEnvVars property inside the server, csiProvider and injector sections.

yaml
server:
  extraEnvVars:
    - name: LOG_LEVEL
      value: error

Alternatively, you can use a ConfigMap or a Secret with the environment variables. To do so, use the extraEnvVarsCM or the extraEnvVarsSecret values inside the server, csiProvider and injector sections.

Sidecars

If additional containers are needed in the same pod as Vault (such as additional metrics or logging exporters), they can be defined using the sidecars parameter inside the server, csiProvider and injector sections.

yaml
sidecars:
- name: your-image-name
  image: your-image
  imagePullPolicy: Always
  ports:
  - name: portname
    containerPort: 1234

If these sidecars export extra ports, extra port definitions can be added using the service.extraPorts parameter (where available), as shown in the example below:

yaml
service:
  extraPorts:
  - name: extraPort
    port: 11311
    targetPort: 11311

Note This Helm chart already includes sidecar containers for the Prometheus exporters (where applicable). These can be activated by adding the --enable-metrics=true parameter at deployment time. The sidecars parameter should therefore only be used for any extra sidecar containers.

If additional init containers are needed in the same pod, they can be defined using the initContainers parameter. Here is an example:

yaml
initContainers:
  - name: your-image-name
    image: your-image
    imagePullPolicy: Always
    ports:
      - name: portname
        containerPort: 1234

Learn more about sidecar containers and init containers.

Pod affinity

This chart allows you to set your custom affinity using the affinity parameter. Find more information about pod affinity in the Kubernetes documentation.

As an alternative, use one of the preset configurations for pod affinity, pod anti-affinity, and node affinity available at the https://github.com/bitnami/charts/tree/main/bitnami/common#affinities chart. To do so, set the podAffinityPreset, podAntiAffinityPreset, or nodeAffinityPreset parameters inside the server, csiProvider and injector sections.

Backup and restore

To back up and restore Helm chart deployments on Kubernetes, you need to back up the persistent volumes from the source deployment and attach them to a new deployment using Velero, a Kubernetes backup/restore tool. Find the instructions for using Velero in this guide.

FIPS parameters

The FIPS parameters only have effect if you are using images from the Bitnami Secure Images catalog.

For more information on this new support, please refer to the FIPS Compliance section.

Persistence

The https://github.com/bitnami/containers/tree/main/bitnami/vault image stores the Vault data and configurations at the /bitnami path of the container. Persistent Volume Claims are used to keep the data across deployments. This is known to work in GCE, AWS, and minikube.

Parameters

The following subsections list global, common, and component-specific parameters.

Global parameters

Common parameters

Vault Server Parameters

_Note: the README for this chart is longer than the DockerHub length limit of 25000, so it has been trimmed. The full README can be found at [***]