argocd-vault-plugin VS vault-creds

ArgoCD supports SOPS with the vault Plugin.

repoServer: rbac: - verbs: - get - list - watch apiGroups: - '' resources: - secrets - configmaps initContainers: - name: download-tools image: registry.access.redhat.com/ubi8 env: - name: AVP_VERSION value: 1.11.0 command: [sh, -c] args: - >- curl -L https://github.com/argoproj-labs/argocd-vault-plugin/releases/download/v$(AVP_VERSION)/argocd-vault-plugin_$(AVP_VERSION)_linux_amd64 -o argocd-vault-plugin && chmod +x argocd-vault-plugin && mv argocd-vault-plugin /custom-tools/ volumeMounts: - mountPath: /custom-tools name: custom-tools extraContainers: - name: avp-helm command: [/var/run/argocd/argocd-cmp-server] image: quay.io/argoproj/argocd:v2.4.8 securityContext: runAsNonRoot: true runAsUser: 999 volumeMounts: - mountPath: /var/run/argocd name: var-files - mountPath: /home/argocd/cmp-server/plugins name: plugins - mountPath: /tmp name: tmp-dir - mountPath: /home/argocd/cmp-server/config name: cmp-plugin - name: custom-tools subPath: argocd-vault-plugin mountPath: /usr/local/bin/argocd-vault-plugin volumes: - configMap: name: cmp-plugin name: cmp-plugin - name: custom-tools emptyDir: {} - name: tmp-dir emptyDir: {} # If you face issue with ArgoCD CRDs installation, then uncomment below section to disable it #crds: # install: false

argoproj-labs/argocd-vault-plugin

We’re using https://github.com/argoproj-labs/argocd-vault-plugin which allows you to define secrets in git (works with more backends than just hashicorp vault despite the name). The documentation took me a bit to figure out, but so far it works.

Argo CD Vault plugin

I used argocd vault plugin https://github.com/IBM/argocd-vault-plugin

Exactly, we hide this from our devs. They can add secrets to hc vault via ui or via cli and know the „keywords“ to render it to properties. Which we then provide via env vars or properties file to app. For databases we do the same, there we use https://github.com/uswitch/vault-creds which hides the database related things. For encrypted communication we used in the past a sidecar with envoy that simply took certs from vault and in our apps we added the pki ca we managed via vault. So this was also hidden and devs not had to take care of encryption in their apps (today you use a service mesh for it) ;) and especially were also not affected by expired certs, as envoy has hot reload. For Kafka we still use this mechanism to implement authn and authz. There we have a callback which rotates pods when Kafka keystone is near expiry date. The only thing our devs have to worry about is encryption as a service. There I found so far no abstraction.