Book Image

Hands-on Kubernetes on Azure, Third Edition - Third Edition

By : Nills Franssens, Shivakumar Gopalakrishnan, Gunther Lenz
Book Image

Hands-on Kubernetes on Azure, Third Edition - Third Edition

By: Nills Franssens, Shivakumar Gopalakrishnan, Gunther Lenz

Overview of this book

Containers and Kubernetes containers facilitate cloud deployments and application development by enabling efficient versioning with improved security and portability. With updated chapters on role-based access control, pod identity, storing secrets, and network security in AKS, this third edition begins by introducing you to containers, Kubernetes, and Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS), and guides you through deploying an AKS cluster in different ways. You will then delve into the specifics of Kubernetes by deploying a sample guestbook application on AKS and installing complex Kubernetes apps using Helm. With the help of real-world examples, you'll also get to grips with scaling your applications and clusters. As you advance, you'll learn how to overcome common challenges in AKS and secure your applications with HTTPS. You will also learn how to secure your clusters and applications in a dedicated section on security. In the final section, you’ll learn about advanced integrations, which give you the ability to create Azure databases and run serverless functions on AKS as well as the ability to integrate AKS with a continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) pipeline using GitHub Actions. By the end of this Kubernetes book, you will be proficient in deploying containerized workloads on Microsoft Azure with minimal management overhead.
Table of Contents (22 chapters)
1
Foreword
Free Chapter
2
Section 1: The Basics
5
Section 2: Deploying on AKS
11
Section 3: Securing your AKS cluster and workloads
16
Section 4: Integrating with Azure managed services
21
Index

10. Storing secrets in AKS

All production applications require some sensitive information to function, such as passwords or connection strings. Kubernetes has a pluggable back end to manage these secrets. Kubernetes also provides multiple ways of using the secrets in your deployment. The ability to manage secrets and use them properly will make your applications more secure.

You have already used secrets previously in this book. You used them when connecting to the WordPress site to create blog posts in Chapter 3, Application deployment on AKS, and Chapter 4, Building scalable applications. You also used secrets in Chapter 6, Securing your application with HTTPS, when you were configuring the Application Gateway Ingress Controller with TLS.

Kubernetes has a built-in secret system that stores secrets in a semi-encrypted fashion in the default Kubernetes database. This system works well but isn't the most secure way to deal with secrets in Kubernetes. In AKS...