Control Plane Authentication using custom certs

Envoy Gateway establishes a secure TLS connection for control plane communication between Envoy Gateway pods and the Envoy Proxy fleet. The TLS Certificates used here are self signed and generated using a job that runs before envoy gateway is created, and these certs and mounted on to the envoy gateway and envoy proxy pods.

This task will walk you through configuring custom certs for control plane auth.

Before you begin

We use Cert-Manager to manage the certificates. You can install it by following the official guide.

Configure custom certs for control plane

  1. First you need to set up the CA issuer, in this task, we use the selfsigned-issuer as an example.

    You should not use the self-signed issuer in production, you should use a real CA issuer.

    cat <<EOF | kubectl apply -f -
    apiVersion: cert-manager.io/v1
    kind: Issuer
    metadata:
      labels:
        app.kubernetes.io/name: envoy-gateway
      name: selfsigned-issuer
      namespace: envoy-gateway-system
    spec:
      selfSigned: {}
    ---
    apiVersion: cert-manager.io/v1
    kind: Certificate
    metadata:
      name: envoy-gateway-ca
      namespace: envoy-gateway-system
    spec:
      isCA: true
      commonName: envoy-gateway
      secretName: envoy-gateway-ca
      privateKey:
        algorithm: RSA
        size: 2048
      issuerRef:
        name: selfsigned-issuer
        kind: Issuer
        group: cert-manager.io
    ---
    apiVersion: cert-manager.io/v1
    kind: Issuer
    metadata:
      labels:
        app.kubernetes.io/name: envoy-gateway
      name: eg-issuer
      namespace: envoy-gateway-system
    spec:
      ca:
        secretName: envoy-gateway-ca
    EOF
    
  2. Create a cert for envoy gateway controller, the cert will be stored in secret envoy-gatewy.

    cat<<EOF | kubectl apply -f -
    apiVersion: cert-manager.io/v1
    kind: Certificate
    metadata:
      labels:
        app.kubernetes.io/name: envoy-gateway
      name: envoy-gateway
      namespace: envoy-gateway-system
    spec:
      commonName: envoy-gateway
      dnsNames:
      - "envoy-gateway"
      - "envoy-gateway.envoy-gateway-system"
      - "envoy-gateway.envoy-gateway-system.svc"
      - "envoy-gateway.envoy-gateway-system.svc.cluster.local"
      issuerRef:
        kind: Issuer
        name: eg-issuer
      usages:
      - "digital signature"
      - "data encipherment"
      - "key encipherment"
      - "content commitment"
      secretName: envoy-gateway
    EOF
    
  3. Create a cert for envoy proxy, the cert will be stored in secret envoy.

    cat<<EOF | kubectl apply -f -
    apiVersion: cert-manager.io/v1
    kind: Certificate
    metadata:
      labels:
        app.kubernetes.io/name: envoy-gateway
      name: envoy
      namespace: envoy-gateway-system
    spec:
      commonName: "*"
      dnsNames:
      - "*.envoy-gateway-system"
      issuerRef:
        kind: Issuer
        name: eg-issuer
      usages:
      - "digital signature"
      - "data encipherment"
      - "key encipherment"
      - "content commitment"
      secretName: envoy
    EOF
    
  4. Create a cert for rate limit, the cert will be stored in secret envoy-rate-limit.

    cat<<EOF | kubectl apply -f -
    apiVersion: cert-manager.io/v1
    kind: Certificate
    metadata:
      labels:
        app.kubernetes.io/name: envoy-gateway
      name: envoy-rate-limit
      namespace: envoy-gateway-system
    spec:
      commonName: "*"
      dnsNames:
      - "*.envoy-gateway-system"
      issuerRef:
        kind: Issuer
        name: eg-issuer
      usages:
      - "digital signature"
      - "data encipherment"
      - "key encipherment"
      - "content commitment"
      secretName: envoy-rate-limit
    EOF
    
  5. Now you can follow the helm chart installation guide to install envoy gateway with custom certs.


Last modified December 6, 2024: feat: add body to ext auth (#4671) (ac86045)