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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.

Prerequisites

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

Enable X.509 Authentication for a MongoDBMultiCluster Resource

1

Create the secret for your agent's X.509 certificate of your MongoDBMultiCluster resource.

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 resource to enable X509 authentication.

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

Verify that the MongoDBMultiCluster resources are running.

  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

Renew X.509 Certificates for a MongoDBMultiCluster Resource

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

1

Renew the secret for a MongoDBMultiCluster resource.

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

Renew the secret for your agent's X.509 certificates.

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 -
←  Secure Client Authentication with LDAPSecure Internal Authentication with X.509 →

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