Secret

A Secret is an object that contains a small amount of sensitive data such as a password, a token, or a key.
Such information might otherwise be put in a Cargo specification.
Using a Secret means that you don't need to include confidential data in your application code.

Because Secrets can be created independently of the Cargoes that use them, there is less risk of the Secret (and its data) being exposed during the workflow of creating, viewing, and editing Cargoes.
Nanocl, and applications that run in your cluster, can also take additional precautions with Secrets, such as avoiding writing secret data to nonvolatile storage.

warning

Nanocl Secrets are, by default, stored unencrypted in the API server's underlying data store (cockroachdb).
Anyone with API access can retrieve or modify a Secret, and so can anyone with access to cockroachdb. Additionally, anyone who is authorized to create a Cargo can use that access to read any Secret; this includes indirect access such as the ability to create a Deployment.

In order to safely use Secrets, take at least the following steps:

• Enable Encryption at Rest for Secrets.

• Consider using external Secret store providers.

Uses for Secrets

You can use Secrets for purposes such as the following:

• Set environment variables for a Cargo.
• Store your TLS certificates

The Nanocl daemon also uses Secrets; for example, bootstrap token Secrets are a mechanism to help automate node registration.

Kinds of secrets

When creating a Secret, you must specify its Kind using the type field of the Secret resource.
The Secret type is used to facilitate programmatic handling of the Secret data.

Nanocl provides several built-in types for some common usage scenarios.
These types vary in terms of the validations performed and the constraints Nanocl imposes on them.

You can define and use your own Secret type by assigning your own value string as the Kind value for a Secret object.

Nanocl doesn't impose any constraints on the type name. However, if you are using one of the built-in types, you must meet all the requirements defined for that type.

Built-in Kind	Usage
nanocl.io/env	data for an environments variables
nanocl.io/tls	data for a TLS client or server

Env

Secret of Kind Env are environement variable that you can bind to your Cargoes.
You can create then using the following Statefile:

ApiVersion: v0.16

Secrets:
- Name: env.super-secret
  Kind: nanocl.io/env
  Data:
  - MY_ENV=MY_VALUE
  - MY_ENV1=MY_VALUE1

Tls

Secret of Kind Tls are certificat that you can bind to your ProxyRules.
You can create then using the following Statefile:

ApiVersion: v0.16

Secrets:
- Name: cert.my-certificate
  Kind: nanocl.io/tls
  Data:
    Certificate: |
      -----BEGIN CERTIFICATE-----
      MIIDETCCAfkCFFOJVQs8PxWlcJQDn...
    CertificateKey: |
      -----BEGIN PRIVATE KEY-----
      MIIEvQIBADANBgkqhkiG9w0B...

Below you can find the full spec of the Tls Kind:

Certificate required	string Path to the certificate
CertificateClient	string or null Path to the certificate client
CertificateKey required	string Path to the certificate key
Dhparam	string or null Path to the dhparam file
VerifyClient	boolean or null Enable or disable client verification

{

• "Certificate": "string",
• "CertificateKey": "string",
• "CertificateClient": "string",
• "VerifyClient": true,
• "Dhparam": "string"

}

info

When using a Tls Secret we will need to content of the file instead of their path.