Managing secrets in Kubernetes

Sensitive information such as passwords, service account names, certificates, and other confidential data needed by Sametime pods are stored in secrets. In addition to helm charts and configuration map, the Sametime configuration is also derived from secrets.

A secret is considered part of the live runtime or the current configuration. Secrets are created based upon a template or a command line. You can modify the templates to re-create secrets if needed. An example is when you need to update your LDAP bind credentials. For more information see, Changing the LDAP service account password in Kubernetes.

For additional information about secrets in Kubernetes, see the Secrets topic in the Kubernetes documentation.

Some secrets are required by Sametime. They are created during the installation and configuration of Sametime.

Some secrets are required by Sametime and others are based on features being used, such as SAML. The following are global secrets that are required.

Table 1. Required secrets
Secret	Description	Template
sametime-global-secrets	The helm/templates/sametime-secrets.yaml is used to define this secret. Note that all values within this secret are based64 encoded. The following parameters are contained in the global secret. JwtSecret The secret key used by the Sametime service to verify and decide the hash of JWT tokens. LdapBindEntryDn The LDAP Bind account. LdapBindEntryPassword The password for the LDAP bind account. MongoConnectionUrl The MongoDB formatted URL containing the login name and password used by Sametime. The host name and port number are also included. JigasiSipUri The name of the of the account and the host name of the SIP user fortelephony integration with iLink. JigasiSipPassword The password for telephony integration with iLink. ltpaKeysPassword The password for the LTPA keys. MeetingLocationSecret The secret key used to communicate to the primary location service. JvbAuthPassword The password for the JVB authentication account.	helm/templates/sametime-secrets.yaml
sametime-internal-keys-secret	Contains information about the certificate key store.	None
tls-secret	The name of this secret can vary because it is configurable. The name can also vary depending on the ingress controller. The ingress controller might be secured with a certificate within a secret as well.	None

The following are default internal secrets and based off the listed template. Do not change the content within these secrets unless instructed by the software support team.

Table 2. Internal secrets
Secret Name	Template
app-registry-config-secret	helm/templates/app-registry-config-secrets.yaml
auth-config-secret	helm/templates/auth-config-secrets.yaml
catalog-config-secret	helm/templates/catalog-config-secrets.yaml

The following is a list of optional secrets that are dependent on a feature being enabled, such as SAML.

Table 3. Option secrets
Secret name	Description
extra-community-config	A configurable secret that contains extra configuration details for the Community pod. It can contain a copy of the StCommunityConfig.xml, UserInfoConfig.xml, and other community files.
ldap-config-secret	The certificate trust store and password for LDAP. See Securing LDAP on Kubernetes for more details.
saml-config-secret	The certificate trust store and password for SAML. See Configuring SAML in Kubernetes for more details.

Considerations for when namespaces are used

In Kubernetes, the Sametime cluster can be deployed in a namespace which makes administration easier for organizations that have multiple users sharing cluster resources. For example, you might want to run MongoDB in the same Kubernetes cluster as Sametime. They could be separated into different namespaces.

When creating secrets in a Sametime cluster that is scoped to a namespace, the secrets also need to be scoped to the same namespace where Sametime is installed. To define the namespace, add the -n argument followed by the namespace name to the command. For example, the following shows the get command for a namespace with the name st.

kubectl get secrets -n st