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Kubernetes

The Bitwarden Secrets Manager Kubernetes Operator (sm-operator) is a tool for teams to integrate Bitwarden Secrets Manager into their Kubernetes workflows seamlessly.

The sm-operator uses a controller to synchronize Bitwarden Secrets into Kubernetes secrets. It does so by registering a Custom Resource Definition of BitwardenSecret into the cluster. It will listen for new BitwardenSecrets registered on the cluster and then synchronize on a configurable interval.

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If you're new to Secrets Manager, you should read the Help Center documentation first to understand how it works.

Requirements​

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Most of the required setup can be handled using Visual Studio Code Dev Containers. That is the recommended approach, especially for macOS and Windows users.

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The Dev Container will not work correctly if you are using a container engine other than Docker.

You will also need:

Setup and configuration​

Clone the repository:

git clone https://github.com/bitwarden/sm-kubernetes.git

Open Visual Studio Code at the repository root.

Dev Container setup is automated. This will create a Kind cluster and setup all necessary software.

  • Open the command palette (using Cmd/Ctrl+Shift+P or F1 depending on user settings)
  • Start typing Dev Containers: Reopen in Container

Configuration settings​

A .env file will be created in the repository root once the Dev Container is created or make setup has been run. The following environment variable settings can be updated to change the behavior of the operator:

  • BW_API_URL - Sets the Bitwarden API URL that the Secrets Manager SDK uses. This is useful for self-host scenarios, as well as hitting European servers.
  • BW_IDENTITY_API_URL - Sets the Bitwarden Identity service URL that the Secrets Manager SDK uses. This is useful for self-host scenarios, as well as hitting European servers.
  • BW_SECRETS_MANAGER_STATE_PATH - Sets the base path where Secrets Manager SDK stores its state files.
  • BW_SECRETS_MANAGER_REFRESH_INTERVAL - Specifies the refresh interval in seconds for syncing secrets between Secrets Manager and K8s secrets. The minimum value is 180.

Running and debugging​

  1. Install the Custom Resource Definition into the cluster using make install or by using the Visual Studio Task called "apply-crd" from the "Tasks: Run Task" in the command palette.

  2. To debug the code, just hit F5. You can also use make run at the command line to run without debugging.

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You can also run this (without a debugger) in one step by running: make install run

Uninstall Custom Resource Definition​

To delete the CRDs from the cluster:

make uninstall
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Run make --help for more information on all potential make targets

Create a BitwardenSecret to test​

With the debugger running, we now will create a BitwardenSecret object to synchronize Secret Manager secrets into a K8s secret:

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Creating the authorization token secret below via kubectl will place your authorization token in the machine terminal history. For production systems, consider using a CSI secrets driver or applying the secret via an ephemeral build agent.

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Make sure to run the following commands in the Dev Container terminal in VS Code.

  1. Create a secret to house the Secrets Manager authentication token in the namespace where you will be creating your BitwardenSecret object: kubectl create secret generic bw-auth-token -n <some-namespace> --from-literal=token="<Auth-Token-Here>"
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To get a list of namespaces, run kubectl get namespaces

  1. Install an instance of BitwardenSecret. An example can be found in config/samples/k8s_v1_bitwardensecret.yaml. You will want to copy this example and update it for your own needs. Then apply it like so: kubectl apply -n <some-namespace> -f k8s_v1_bitwardensecret.yaml

  2. In the Debug Console window, you should see messages stating that the secret started and completed synchronization.

  3. Run the following to view if the secret was created: kubectl get secrets -n <some-namespace>

  4. Run the following to view the structure and data of the synchronized secret: kubectl get secret -n <some-namespace> <secret-name> -o yaml

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The secret values are stored as Base64 encoded strings.

BitwardenSecret manifest​

Think of the BitwardenSecret object as the synchronization settings that will be used by the operator to create and synchronize a Kubernetes secret. This Kubernetes secret will live inside of a namespace and will be injected with the data available to a Secrets Manager machine account (previously known as service account). The resulting Kubernetes secret will include all secrets that a specific machine account has access to. The sample file (config/samples/k8s_v1_bitwardensecret.yaml) provides the basic structure of a BitwardenSecret manifest. The key settings that you will want to update are listed below:

  • metadata.name: The name of the BitwardenSecret object you are deploying
  • spec.organizationId: The Bitwarden organization ID you are pulling Secrets Manager data from
  • spec.secretName: The name of the Kubernetes secret that will be created and injected with Secrets Manager data.
  • spec.authToken: The name of a secret inside of the Kubernetes namespace that the BitwardenSecrets object is being deployed into that contains the Secrets Manager machine account authorization token being used to access secrets.

Secrets Manager does not guarantee unique secret names across projects, so by default secrets will be created with the Secrets Manager secret UUID used as the key. To make your generated secret easier to use, you can create a map of Bitwarden Secret IDs to Kubernetes secret keys. The generated secret will replace the Bitwarden Secret IDs with the mapped friendly name you provide. Below are the map settings available:

  • bwSecretId: This is the UUID of the secret in Secrets Manager. This can found under the secret name in the Secrets Manager web portal or by using the Bitwarden Secrets Manager CLI.
  • secretKeyName: The resulting key inside the Kubernetes secret that replaces the UUID

Note that the custom mapping is made available on the generated secret for informational purposes in the k8s.bitwarden.com/custom-map annotation.

Testing the Docker image​

Kind on Windows has a difficult time pulling from a local registry, so we have provided two different routes for deploying the image.

  1. Build and push your image to a registry location (local or otherwise) specified by IMG: make docker-build docker-push IMG=<some-registry>/sm-operator:tag

  2. Deploy the controller to the cluster with the image specified by IMG: make deploy IMG=<some-registry>/sm-operator:tag

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Custom configuration of URLs, refresh interval, and state path is handled by updating the environment variables in config/manager/manager.yaml when working with the container.

After install, create your K8s authorization token secret and a BitwardenSecret as described earlier in this document to test.

Viewing pod logs​

To view the logs of an operator deployed via the steps above:

  1. Run kubectl get pods -n sm-operator-system. This will retrieve the name of the installed operator pod.

  2. Run kubectl logs -n sm-operator-system <name-of-pod-from-previous-step>

Undeploy controller​

To remove the controller pod installed to the cluster, run:

make undeploy

Unit testing​

Unit tests are currently found in the following files:

  • internal/controller/suite_test.go

  • cmd/suite_test.go

To run the unit tests, run make test. To debug the unit tests, open the file you would like to debug. In the Run and Debug tab in Visual Studio Code, change the launch configuration from "Debug" to "Test current file", and then press F5.

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You will need to run make test prior to debugging tests, since this will setup some of the necessary software for the operator tests.

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Using the Visual Studio Code "Testing" tab is not currently supported.

Modifying the API definitions​

If you are editing the API definitions via api/v1/bitwardensecret_types.go, re-generate the manifests using:

make manifests

More information can be found via the Kubebuilder Documentation