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How to Bake an Ortelius Pi Part 4 | Cloudflare Certificates and Traefik

By Sacha Wharton | Saturday, August 10, 2024

Introduction
Cloudflare | Connectivity Cloud
- Buying a domain name
- SSL/TLS
Gimlet GitOps Infrastructure
Conclusion
Next Steps

Introduction

In part 3, of this series we used the GitOps Methodology to deploy the Cert Manager, NFS CSI Driver for Kubernetes to connect to the Synology NAS for centralised dynamic volume storage, Metallb Load Balancer, Traefik Proxy as the entrypoint for our Microservices and Ortelius the ultimate evidence store using Gimlet as the UI to our GitOps controller Fluxcd.

In part 4 we will setup Cloudflare, LetsEncrypt and Traefik to secure incoming requests with certificates.

Cloudflare | Connectivity Cloud

You might know Cloudflare as a CDN but its so much more than that. Cloudflare is packed with amazing features and security offerings which are just to many to cover in this blog.

Cloudflare have kindly provided a free plan which we will use, so the first thing you need to do is set up an account for yourself or if you have an account login.

Buying a domain name

Now we need a DNS domain so if you don’t have one you will need to buy one which you can do through Cloudflare.
Click on Websites

Click on Add a site

Click on register a new domain

Click in the Search for a domain name box and find a domain

Cloudflare will tell you if your domain is available. Unfortunately my cats name mottles.com was not available. She will not be impressed
Pick your domain and brandish your credit card

At the end of the process when you get back to Websites you should see your new domain registered
Here you can see my domain pangarabbit.com
Click on our new domain and head over to DNS

You should have 2 DNS A records like below | * is for wildcard and the domain apex pangarabbit.com
The domain apex record should be there but you might have to add the wildcard if memory serves me correctly

SSL/TLS

Lets head over to SSL/TLS now

You will be faced with the following screen and you want to have Full (strict) enabled

Below are some caveats to take note of which are taken from that little Help button

Why isn’t my site working over HTTPS?

Certificate provisioning typically takes around 15 minutes for paid plans and up to 24 hours for Free plans. Contact support if you do not have a certificate after that time. If the certificate is already “active” under the Edge Certificates tab, but you still cannot access your site over HTTPS, refer to the troubleshooting documentation. What encryption mode should I use?

Cloudflare strongly recommends using Full or Full (strict) modes to prevent malicious connections to your origin. For details on each available mode, refer to the encryption modes documentation.

I turned this on

Clicking on Edge Certificates you will see that the kind folks at Cloudflare have provided you with a certificate for free also known as Universal SSL

Attention: Let’s Encrypt’s chain of trust will be changing on September 2024. Universal SSL certificates will be automatically switched to a more compatible certificate authority. Review our documentation for details and to understand the impacts on other certificate types.

Enable Always Use HTTPS

I set Minimum TLS Version to TLS 1.3 for the best security

I enabled Opportunistic Encryption

I turned on TLS 1.3 for the best security

I turned on Automatic HTTPS Rewrites

Great we should have a functional certificate which will be auto renewed and we can use Traefik as the single point of entry for secure connections.

Gimlet GitOps Infrastructure

Traefik

Helm-Release | Traefik

Lets go back to our Traefik Helm Release and make some amendments
Edit traefik.yaml in the helm-releases directory gitops-<your name>-infra which was created by Gimlet and Fluxcd with the following changes

Manifest Folder | Traefik

The folks at Traefik put this nice piece of logic in the Helm Chart that allows you to create a config file which is dynamically monitored by Traefik
I am using this to manage the Lets Encrypt certicate renewal in conjunction with Cloudflare
Its time to ENABLE the certificate logic in /manifests/traefik-dynamic-config.yaml and git push and allow Flux to handle the deployment

      file:
        # -- Create a file provider
        enabled: true
        # -- Allows Traefik to automatically watch for file changes
        watch: true
        # -- File content (YAML format, go template supported) (see https://doc.traefik.io/traefik/providers/file/)
        # content:
        providers:
          file:
            directory: /manifests/traefik-dynamic-config.yaml

The logic in the traefik-dynamic-config.yaml would have created a secret with your Cloudflare API token and a Issuer for your certificate using Certificate Manager
Run the following to see your created certificate

kubectl get certificates -owide -n infrastructure

Mine is called wildcard-pangarabbit-com but we are are interested in the SECRET

Below I am showing the ingressRoute for the dashboard and you can see I only have websecure enabled now
I have added the tls configuration which matches SECRET as in the above image

    ingressRoute:
      dashboard:
        # -- Create an IngressRoute for the dashboard
        enabled: true
        # -- Additional ingressRoute annotations (e.g. for kubernetes.io/ingress.class)
        annotations: {}
        # -- Additional ingressRoute labels (e.g. for filtering IngressRoute by custom labels)
        labels: {}
        # -- The router match rule used for the dashboard ingressRoute
        matchRule: Host(`traefik.pangarabbit.com`) #PathPrefix(`/dashboard`) || PathPrefix(`/api`)
        # -- Specify the allowed entrypoints to use for the dashboard ingress route, (e.g. traefik, web, websecure).
        # By default, it's using traefik entrypoint, which is not exposed.
        # /!\ Do not expose your dashboard without any protection over the internet /!\
        entryPoints: ["websecure"]
        # -- Additional ingressRoute middlewares (e.g. for authentication)
        middlewares: []
        # -- TLS options (e.g. secret containing certificate)
        tls:
          default:
            defaultCertificate:
              secretName: wildcard-pangarabbit-com-tls
      healthcheck:
        # -- Create an IngressRoute for the healthcheck probe
        enabled: false
        # -- Additional ingressRoute annotations (e.g. for kubernetes.io/ingress.class)
        annotations: {}
        # -- Additional ingressRoute labels (e.g. for filtering IngressRoute by custom labels)
        labels: {}
        # -- The router match rule used for the healthcheck ingressRoute
        matchRule: PathPrefix(`/ping`)
        # -- Specify the allowed entrypoints to use for the healthcheck ingress route, (e.g. traefik, web, websecure).
        # By default, it's using traefik entrypoint, which is not exposed.
        entryPoints: ["traefik"]
        # -- Additional ingressRoute middlewares (e.g. for authentication)
        middlewares: []
        # -- TLS options (e.g. secret containing certificate)
        tls: {}

To enable the certificate for all the workloads behind Traefik you need to change the following in your Helm Release and make your certifcate the default

    # -- TLS Store are created as [TLSStore CRDs](https://doc.traefik.io/traefik/https/tls/#default-certificate). This is useful if you want to set a default certificate. See EXAMPLE.md for details.
    tlsStore:
      default:
        defaultCertificate:
          secretName: wildcard-pangarabbit-com-tls

In the following image we can see that our services have green shields to indicate that they are configured with TLS
To access the Traefik dashboard the URL is traefik.pangarabbit.com (Access your dashboard at your domain name)

All we have done now is secure the Traefik dashboard but how would we do it for other workloads. Lets look at a few examples.

Ortelius HTTPS

For Ortelius we had to use the k3d type to make it Traefik aware
Now when requests arrive at Traefiks front door Traefik is aware of Ortelius and can send requests to ms-nginx microservice and gain access to the Ortelius backend

    ms-nginx:
      ingress:
        type: k3d # --set ms-nginx.ingress.type=k3d`
                  # This setting is for enabling the Traefik Class so that Traefik is made aware of Ortelius
                  # K3d https://k3d.io/v5.6.0/ is a lightweight Kubernetes deployment which uses Traefik as the default
        dnsname: ortelius.pangarabbit.com # --set ms-nginx.ingress.dnsname=<your domain name goes here>
                                          # The URL that will go in your browser to access the Ortelius frontend

Argocd HTTPS

For Argocd I had to edit the ingressClassName to make it Traefik aware and also enable TLS

      # Argo CD server ingress configuration
      ingress:
        # -- Enable an ingress resource for the Argo CD server
        enabled: true
        # -- Specific implementation for ingress controller. One of `generic`, `aws` or `gke`
        ## Additional configuration might be required in related configuration sections
        controller: generic
        # -- Additional ingress labels
        labels: {}
        # -- Additional ingress annotations
        ## Ref: https://argo-cd.readthedocs.io/en/stable/operator-manual/ingress/#option-1-ssl-passthrough
        annotations:
          {}
          # nginx.ingress.kubernetes.io/force-ssl-redirect: "true"
          # nginx.ingress.kubernetes.io/ssl-passthrough: "true"

        # -- Defines which ingress controller will implement the resource
        ingressClassName: "traefik"

        # -- Argo CD server hostname
        # @default -- `""` (defaults to global.domain)
        hostname: "argocd.pangarabbit.com"

        # -- The path to Argo CD server
        path: /

        # -- Ingress path type. One of `Exact`, `Prefix` or `ImplementationSpecific`
        pathType: Prefix

        # -- Enable TLS configuration for the hostname defined at `server.ingress.hostname`
        ## TLS certificate will be retrieved from a TLS secret `argocd-server-tls`
        ## You can create this secret via `certificate` or `certificateSecret` option
        tls: true

Conclusion

In Part 4 we configured a certificate for our domain using Cloudflare, LetsEncrypt and Traefik. From my experience the crucial configuration change for any workloads to access the frontend securely was to enable the ingress, TLS and to change the ingressClassName to traefik in the Helm Release values.

Happy alien hunting…….

Next Steps

How to Bake an Ortelius Pi | Part 5 | Ortelius Marries Jenkins

Meet the Author

Learn More About:

Sacha Wharton