Chapter 11. Tutorial: Using AWS Secrets Manager CSI on ROSA with STS


The AWS Secrets and Configuration Provider (ASCP) provides a way to expose AWS Secrets as Kubernetes storage volumes. With the ASCP, you can store and manage your secrets in Secrets Manager and then retrieve them through your workloads running on Red Hat OpenShift Service on AWS (ROSA).

11.1. Prerequisites

Ensure that you have the following resources and tools before starting this process:

  • A ROSA cluster deployed with STS
  • Helm 3
  • aws CLI
  • oc CLI
  • jq CLI

Additional environment requirements

  1. Log in to your ROSA cluster by running the following command:

    $ oc login --token=<your-token> --server=<your-server-url>
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    You can find your login token by accessing your cluster in pull secret from Red Hat OpenShift Cluster Manager.

  2. Validate that your cluster has STS by running the following command:

    $ oc get authentication.config.openshift.io cluster -o json \
      | jq .spec.serviceAccountIssuer
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    Example output

    "https://xxxxx.cloudfront.net/xxxxx"
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    If your output is different, do not proceed. See Red Hat documentation on creating an STS cluster before continuing this process.

  3. Set the SecurityContextConstraints permission to allow the CSI driver to run by running the following command:

    $ oc new-project csi-secrets-store
    $ oc adm policy add-scc-to-user privileged \
        system:serviceaccount:csi-secrets-store:secrets-store-csi-driver
    $ oc adm policy add-scc-to-user privileged \
        system:serviceaccount:csi-secrets-store:csi-secrets-store-provider-aws
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  4. Create environment variables to use later in this process by running the following command:

    $ export REGION=$(oc get infrastructure cluster -o=jsonpath="{.status.platformStatus.aws.region}")
    $ export OIDC_ENDPOINT=$(oc get authentication.config.openshift.io cluster \
       -o jsonpath='{.spec.serviceAccountIssuer}' | sed  's|^https://||')
    $ export AWS_ACCOUNT_ID=`aws sts get-caller-identity --query Account --output text`
    $ export AWS_PAGER=""
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11.2. Deploying the AWS Secrets and Configuration Provider

  1. Use Helm to register the secrets store CSI driver by running the following command:

    $ helm repo add secrets-store-csi-driver \
        https://kubernetes-sigs.github.io/secrets-store-csi-driver/charts
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  2. Update your Helm repositories by running the following command:

    $ helm repo update
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  3. Install the secrets store CSI driver by running the following command:

    $ helm upgrade --install -n csi-secrets-store \
        csi-secrets-store-driver secrets-store-csi-driver/secrets-store-csi-driver
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  4. Deploy the AWS provider by running the following command:

    $ oc -n csi-secrets-store apply -f \
        https://raw.githubusercontent.com/rh-mobb/documentation/main/content/misc/secrets-store-csi/aws-provider-installer.yaml
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  5. Check that both Daemonsets are running by running the following command:

    $ oc -n csi-secrets-store get ds \
        csi-secrets-store-provider-aws \
        csi-secrets-store-driver-secrets-store-csi-driver
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  6. Label the Secrets Store CSI Driver to allow use with the restricted pod security profile by running the following command:

    $ oc label csidriver.storage.k8s.io/secrets-store.csi.k8s.io security.openshift.io/csi-ephemeral-volume-profile=restricted
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11.3. Creating a Secret and IAM Access Policies

  1. Create a secret in Secrets Manager by running the following command:

    $ SECRET_ARN=$(aws --region "$REGION" secretsmanager create-secret \
        --name MySecret --secret-string \
        '{"username":"shadowman", "password":"hunter2"}' \
        --query ARN --output text); echo $SECRET_ARN
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  2. Create an IAM Access Policy document by running the following command:

    $ cat << EOF > policy.json
    {
       "Version": "2012-10-17",
       "Statement": [{
          "Effect": "Allow",
          "Action": [
            "secretsmanager:GetSecretValue",
            "secretsmanager:DescribeSecret"
          ],
          "Resource": ["$SECRET_ARN"]
          }]
    }
    EOF
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  3. Create an IAM Access Policy by running the following command:

    $ POLICY_ARN=$(aws --region "$REGION" --query Policy.Arn \
    --output text iam create-policy \
    --policy-name openshift-access-to-mysecret-policy \
    --policy-document file://policy.json); echo $POLICY_ARN
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  4. Create an IAM Role trust policy document by running the following command:

    Note

    The trust policy is locked down to the default service account of a namespace you create later in this process.

    $ cat <<EOF > trust-policy.json
    {
       "Version": "2012-10-17",
       "Statement": [
       {
       "Effect": "Allow",
       "Condition": {
         "StringEquals" : {
           "${OIDC_ENDPOINT}:sub": ["system:serviceaccount:my-application:default"]
          }
        },
        "Principal": {
           "Federated": "arn:aws:iam::$AWS_ACCOUNT_ID:oidc-provider/${OIDC_ENDPOINT}"
        },
        "Action": "sts:AssumeRoleWithWebIdentity"
        }
        ]
    }
    EOF
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  5. Create an IAM role by running the following command:

    $ ROLE_ARN=$(aws iam create-role --role-name openshift-access-to-mysecret \
    --assume-role-policy-document file://trust-policy.json \
    --query Role.Arn --output text); echo $ROLE_ARN
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  6. Attach the role to the policy by running the following command:

    $ aws iam attach-role-policy --role-name openshift-access-to-mysecret \
        --policy-arn $POLICY_ARN
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11.4. Create an Application to use this secret

  1. Create an OpenShift project by running the following command:

    $ oc new-project my-application
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  2. Annotate the default service account to use the STS Role by running the following command:

    $ oc annotate -n my-application serviceaccount default \
        eks.amazonaws.com/role-arn=$ROLE_ARN
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  3. Create a secret provider class to access our secret by running the following command:

    $ cat << EOF | oc apply -f -
    apiVersion: secrets-store.csi.x-k8s.io/v1
    kind: SecretProviderClass
    metadata:
      name: my-application-aws-secrets
    spec:
      provider: aws
      parameters:
        objects: |
          - objectName: "MySecret"
            objectType: "secretsmanager"
    EOF
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  4. Create a deployment by using our secret in the following command:

    $ cat << EOF | oc apply -f -
    apiVersion: v1
    kind: Pod
    metadata:
      name: my-application
      labels:
        app: my-application
    spec:
      volumes:
      - name: secrets-store-inline
        csi:
          driver: secrets-store.csi.k8s.io
          readOnly: true
          volumeAttributes:
            secretProviderClass: "my-application-aws-secrets"
      containers:
      - name: my-application-deployment
        image: k8s.gcr.io/e2e-test-images/busybox:1.29
        command:
          - "/bin/sleep"
          - "10000"
        volumeMounts:
        - name: secrets-store-inline
          mountPath: "/mnt/secrets-store"
          readOnly: true
    EOF
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  5. Verify the pod has the secret mounted by running the following command:

    $ oc exec -it my-application -- cat /mnt/secrets-store/MySecret
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11.5. Clean up

  1. Delete the application by running the following command:

    $ oc delete project my-application
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  2. Delete the secrets store csi driver by running the following command:

    $ helm delete -n csi-secrets-store csi-secrets-store-driver
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  3. Delete the security context constraints by running the following command:

    $ oc adm policy remove-scc-from-user privileged \
        system:serviceaccount:csi-secrets-store:secrets-store-csi-driver; oc adm policy remove-scc-from-user privileged \
        system:serviceaccount:csi-secrets-store:csi-secrets-store-provider-aws
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  4. Delete the AWS provider by running the following command:

    $ oc -n csi-secrets-store delete -f \
    https://raw.githubusercontent.com/rh-mobb/documentation/main/content/misc/secrets-store-csi/aws-provider-installer.yaml
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  5. Delete AWS Roles and Policies by running the following command:

    $ aws iam detach-role-policy --role-name openshift-access-to-mysecret \
        --policy-arn $POLICY_ARN; aws iam delete-role --role-name openshift-access-to-mysecret; aws iam delete-policy --policy-arn $POLICY_ARN
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  6. Delete the Secrets Manager secret by running the following command:

    $ aws secretsmanager --region $REGION delete-secret --secret-id $SECRET_ARN
    Copy to Clipboard
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