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Secure Deployments with X.509

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You can configure the Kubernetes Operator to use X.509 certificates to authenticate your client applications in a multi-Kubernetes-cluster deployment.

To secure your multi-Kubernetes-cluster deployment with X.509 certificates, you run all actions on the central cluster. The Kubernetes Operator propagates the X.509 configuration to each member cluster and updates the Kubernetes Operator configuration on each member cluster.

Before you secure your multi-Kubernetes-cluster deployment using TLS encryption, complete the following tasks:

Enabling X.509 authentication at the project level configures all agents to use X.509 client authentication when communicating with MongoDB deployments.

X.509 client authentication requires one of the following:

  • Cloud Manager

  • Ops Manager 5.0.7 or later

1

Run the kubectl command to create a new secret that stores the agent's X.509 certificate:

kubectl --context $MDB_CENTRAL_CLUSTER_FULL_NAME \
--namespace=<metadata.namespace> \
create secret tls <prefix>-<metadata.name>-agent-certs \
--cert=<agent-tls-cert> \
--key=<agent-tls-key>
2

Update your MongoDBMultiCluster custom resource with security settings from the Kubernetes Operator MongoDBMultiCluster resource specification. The resulting configuration may look similar to the following example:

apiVersion: mongodb.com/v1
kind: MongoDBMultiCluster
metadata:
name: multi-replica-set
spec:
version: 5.0.0-ent
type: ReplicaSet
persistent: false
duplicateServiceObjects: true
credentials: my-credentials
opsManager:
configMapRef:
name: my-project
security:
tls:
ca: custom-ca
certsSecretPrefix: <prefix>
authentication:
enabled: true
modes: ["X509"]
agents:
mode: "X509"
clusterSpecList:
- clusterName: ${MDB_CLUSTER_1_FULL_NAME}
members: 3
- clusterName: ${MDB_CLUSTER_2_FULL_NAME}
members: 2
- clusterName: ${MDB_CLUSTER_3_FULL_NAME}
members: 3
The |k8s-op-short| copies the ConfigMap with the |certauth| created in
the central cluster to each member cluster, generates a concatenated
|pem| secret, and distributes it to the member clusters.
3
  1. For member clusters, run the following commands to verify that the MongoDB Pods are in the running state:

    kubectl get pods \
    --context=$MDB_CLUSTER_1_FULL_NAME \
    --namespace mongodb
    kubectl get pods \
    --context=$MDB_CLUSTER_2_FULL_NAME \
    --namespace mongodb
    kubectl get pods \
    --context=$MDB_CLUSTER_3_FULL_NAME \
    --namespace mongodb
  2. In the central cluster, run the following command to verify that the MongoDBMultiCluster resource is in the running state:

    kubectl --context=$MDB_CENTRAL_CLUSTER_FULL_NAME \
    --namespace mongodb \
    get mdbmc multi-replica-set -o yaml -w

If you have already created X.509 certificates, renew them periodically using the following procedure.

1

Run this kubectl command to renew an existing secret that stores the certificates for the MongoDBMultiCluster resource:

kubectl --context $MDB_CENTRAL_CLUSTER_FULL_NAME \
--namespace=<metadata.namespace> \
create secret tls <prefix>-<metadata.name>-cert \
--cert=<resource-tls-cert> \
--key=<resource-tls-key> \
--dry-run=client \
-o yaml |
kubectl apply -f -
2

Run the kubectl command to renew an existing secret that stores the MongoDBMultiCluster resource agent certificates:

kubectl --context $MDB_CENTRAL_CLUSTER_FULL_NAME \
--namespace=<metadata.namespace> \
create secret tls <prefix>-<metadata.name>-agent-certs \
--cert=<agent-tls-cert> \
--key=<agent-tls-key> \
--dry-run=client \
-o yaml | kubectl apply -f -
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