Strange Brew

Stateless "12-factor" applications are all the rage, but there are some kinds of services that are inherently stateful. Good examples are things like relational databases (Postgres, MySQL) and NoSQL databases (Cassandra, etc). These services are difficult to containerize, because the default docker model favours ephemeral containers where the data disappears when the container is destroyed. These services also have a strong need for identity. A database "primary" server is different than the "slave". In Cassandra, certain nodes are designated as seed nodes, and so on. OpenDJ is an open source LDAP directory server from ForgeRock. LDAP servers are inherently "pet like" insomuch as the directory data must persist beyond the container lifetime. OpenDJ nodes also replicate data between themselves to provide high-availability and therefore need some kind of stable network identity. Kubernetes 1.3   introduces a feature called "Pet...

Yes, that title is quite a mouthful, and mostly intended to get the Google juice if I need to find this entry again. I spent a couple of hours figuring out the magical incantations, so thought I would document this here. The problem: You want OpenDJ to use something other than the default self-signed certificate for SSL connections.   A "real" certificate signed by a CA (Certificate Authority) is expensive and a pain to procure and install. The next best alternative is to create your own "internal" CA, and  have that CA sign certificates for your services.   In most cases, this is going to work fine for *internal* services that do not need to be trusted by a browser. You might ask why is this better than just using self-signed certificates?  The idea is that you can import your CA certificate once into the truststore for your various clients, and thereafter those clients will trust any certificate presented that is signed by your CA. For example, assu...