cert-exporter

README

cert-exporter

Kubernetes uses PKI certificates for authentication between all major components. These certs are critical for the operation of your cluster but are often opaque to an administrator. This application is designed to parse certificates and export expiration information for Prometheus to scrape.

WARNING If you run this application in your cluster it will probably require elevated privileges of some kind. Additionally you are exposing VERY sensitive information to it. Review the source!

Usage

cert-exporter can publish metrics about

• x509 certificates on disk encoded in the PEM format
• Certs embedded or referenced from kubeconfig files.
• Certs stored in Kubernetes secrets. This supports applications such as cert-manager.

See deployment for detailed information on running cert-exporter and examples of running it in a kops cluster.

Dashboard

After running cert-exporter in your cluster it's easy to build a custom dashboard to expose information about the certs in your cluster.

Exported Metrics

cert-exporter exports the following metrics

# HELP cert_exporter_error_total Cert Exporter Errors
# TYPE cert_exporter_error_total counter
cert_exporter_error_total 0
# HELP cert_exporter_cert_expires_in_seconds Number of seconds til the cert expires.
# TYPE cert_exporter_cert_expires_in_seconds gauge
cert_exporter_cert_expires_in_seconds{filename="certsSibling/client.crt"} 8.639964560021e+06
# HELP cert_exporter_kubeconfig_expires_in_seconds Number of seconds til the cert in kubeconfig expires.
# TYPE cert_exporter_kubeconfig_expires_in_seconds gauge
cert_exporter_kubeconfig_expires_in_seconds{filename="kubeConfigSibling/kubeconfig",name="cluster1",type="cluster"} 8.639964559682e+06
cert_exporter_kubeconfig_expires_in_seconds{filename="kubeConfigSibling/kubeconfig",name="user1",type="user"} 8.639964559249e+06
# HELP cert_exporter_secret_expires_in_seconds Number of seconds til the cert in the secret expires.
# TYPE cert_exporter_secret_expires_in_seconds gauge
cert_exporter_secret_expires_in_seconds{key_name="ca.crt",secret_name="selfsigned-cert-tls",secret_namespace="cert-manager-test"} 8.6396867095666e+06
cert_exporter_secret_expires_in_seconds{key_name="tls.crt",secret_name="selfsigned-cert-tls",secret_namespace="cert-manager-test"} 8.639686709417423e+06

cert_exporter_error_total
The total number of unexpected errors encountered by cert-exporter. A good metric to watch to feel comfortable certs are being exported properly.

cert_exporter_cert_expires_in_seconds
The number of seconds until a certificate stored in the PEM format is expired. The filename label indicates the exported cert.

cert_exporter_kubeconfig_expires_in_seconds
The number of seconds until a certificate stored in a kubeconfig expires. The filename, type, and name labels indicate the kubeconfig, cluster or user node and name of the node. See details here.

cert_exporter_secret_expires_in_seconds The number of seconds until a certificate stored in a kubernetes secret expires. The key_name, secret_name, and secret_namespace labels indicate the secret key, name and namespace.

Other Docs

• Testing
  • An overview of the testing scripts and how to run them.
• Deployment
  • Information on how to deploy cert-exporter as well as examples for a kops cluster.