Akeyless

Akeyless Secrets Management Platform

External Secrets Operator integrates with the Akeyless Secrets Management Platform.

Create Secret Store:

SecretStore resource specifies how to access Akeyless. This resource is namespaced.

NOTE: Make sure the Akeyless provider is listed in the Kind=SecretStore. If you use a customer fragment, define the value of akeylessGWApiURL as the URL of your Akeyless Gateway in the following format: https://your.akeyless.gw:8080/v2.

Akeyelss provide several Authentication Methods:

Authentication with Kubernetes:

Options for obtaining Kubernetes credentials include:

Using a service account jwt referenced in serviceAccountRef
Using the jwt from a Kind=Secret referenced by the secretRef
Using transient credentials from the mounted service account token within the external-secrets operator

Create the Akeyless Secret Store Provider with Kubernetes Auth-Method

apiVersion: external-secrets.io/v1beta1
kind: SecretStore
metadata:
  name: akeyless-secret-store
spec:
  provider:
    akeyless:
      # URL of your akeyless API
      akeylessGWApiURL: "https://api.akeyless.io"
      authSecretRef:
        kubernetesAuth:
          accessID: "p-XXXXXX"
          k8sConfName: "my-conf-name"

          # Optional service account field containing the name
          # of a kubernetes ServiceAccount
          serviceAccountRef:
            name: "my-sa"

          # Optional secret field containing a Kubernetes ServiceAccount JWT
          # used for authenticating with Akeyless
          secretRef:
            name: "my-secret"
            key: "token"

NOTE: In case of a ClusterSecretStore, Be sure to provide namespace for serviceAccountRef and secretRef according to the namespaces where the secrets reside.

Authentication With Cloud-Identity or Api-Access-Key

Akeyless providers require an access-id, access-type and access-Type-param To set your SecretStore with an authentication method from Akeyless.

The supported auth-methods and their parameters are:

accessType	accessTypeParam
`aws_iam`	-
`gcp`	The gcp audience
`azure_ad`	azure object id (optional)
`api_key`	The access key.
`k8s`	The k8s configuration name
For more information see Akeyless Authentication Methods

Creating an Akeyless Credentials Secret

Create a secret containing your credentials using the following example as a guide:

apiVersion: v1
kind: Secret
metadata:
  name: akeyless-secret-creds
type: Opaque
stringData:
  accessId: "p-XXXX"
  accessType:  # gcp/azure_ad/api_key/k8s/aws_iam
  accessTypeParam:  # optional: can be one of the following: gcp-audience/azure-obj-id/access-key/k8s-conf-name

Create the Akeyless Secret Store Provider with the Credentials Secret

apiVersion: external-secrets.io/v1beta1
kind: SecretStore
metadata:
  name: akeyless-secret-store
spec:
  provider:
    akeyless:
      # URL of your akeyless API
      akeylessGWApiURL: "https://api.akeyless.io"
      authSecretRef:
        secretRef:
          accessID:
            name: akeyless-secret-creds
            key: accessId
          accessType:
            name: akeyless-secret-creds
            key: accessType
          accessTypeParam:
            name: akeyless-secret-creds
            key: accessTypeParam

NOTE: In case of a ClusterSecretStore, be sure to provide namespace for accessID, accessType and accessTypeParam according to the namespaces where the secrets reside.

Create the Akeyless Secret Store With CAs for TLS handshake

....
spec:
  provider:
    akeyless:
      akeylessGWApiURL: "https://your.akeyless.gw:8080/v2"

      # Optional caBundle - PEM/base64 encoded CA certificate
      caBundle: "<base64 encoded cabundle>"
      # Optional caProvider:
      # Instead of caBundle you can also specify a caProvider
      # this will retrieve the cert from a Secret or ConfigMap
      caProvider:
        type: "Secret/ConfigMap" # Can be Secret or ConfigMap
        name: "<name of secret or configmap>"
        key: "<key inside secret>"
        # namespace is mandatory for ClusterSecretStore and not relevant for SecretStore
        namespace: "my-cert-secret-namespace"
  ....

Creating an external secret

To get a secret from Akeyless and create it as a secret on the Kubernetes cluster, a Kind=ExternalSecret is needed.

apiVersion: external-secrets.io/v1beta1
kind: ExternalSecret
metadata:
  name: database-credentials
spec:
  refreshInterval: 1h

  secretStoreRef:
    kind: SecretStore
    name: akeyless-secret-store # Must match SecretStore on the cluster

  target:
    name: database-credentials # Name for the secret to be created on the cluster
    creationPolicy: Owner

  data:
    - secretKey: username # Key given to the secret to be created on the cluster
      remoteRef:
        key: db-username  # Full path of the secret on Akeyless
    - secretKey: password # Key given to the secret to be created on the cluster
      remoteRef:
        key: db-password  # Full path of the secret on Akeyless

Using DataFrom

DataFrom can be used to get a secret as a JSON string and attempt to parse it.

apiVersion: external-secrets.io/v1beta1
kind: ExternalSecret
metadata:
  name: database-credentials
spec:
  refreshInterval: 1h

  secretStoreRef:
    kind: SecretStore
    name: akeyless-secret-store # Must match SecretStore on the cluster

  target:
    name: database-credentials-json # Name for the secret to be created on the cluster
    creationPolicy: Owner

  # for json formatted secrets: each key in the json will be used as the secret key in the SECRET k8s target object
  dataFrom:
  - extract:
      key: database-credentials # Full path of the secret on Akeyless

Getting the Kubernetes Secret

The operator will fetch the secret and inject it as a Kind=Secret.

kubectl get secret database-credentials -o jsonpath='{.data.db-password}' | base64 -d

kubectl get secret database-credentials-json -o jsonpath='{.data}'