helm-external-secrets/docs/guides-getting-started.md

Getting started

External-secrets runs within your Kubernetes cluster as a deployment resource. It utilizes CustomResourceDefinitions to configure access to secret providers through SecretStore resources and manages Kubernetes secret resources with ExternalSecret resources.

Note: The minimum supported version of Kubernetes is 1.16.0. Users still running Kubernetes v1.15 or below should upgrade to a supported version before installing external-secrets.

Installing with Helm

To automatically install and manage the CRDs as part of your Helm release, you must add the --set installCRDs=true flag to your Helm installation command.

Uncomment the relevant line in the next steps to enable this.

Option 1: Install from chart repository

helm repo add external-secrets https://charts.external-secrets.io

helm install external-secrets \
   external-secrets/external-secrets \
    -n external-secrets \
    --create-namespace \
  # --set installCRDs=true

Option 2: Install chart from local build

Build and install the Helm chart locally after cloning the repository.

make helm.build

helm install external-secrets \
    ./bin/chart/external-secrets.tgz \
    -n external-secrets \
    --create-namespace \
  # --set installCRDs=true

Create a secret containing your AWS credentials

echo -n 'KEYID' > ./access-key
echo -n 'SECRETKEY' > ./secret-access-key
kubectl create secret generic awssm-secret --from-file=./access-key  --from-file=./secret-access-key

Create your first SecretStore

{% include 'basic-secret-store.yaml' %}

Create your first ExternalSecret

{% include 'basic-external-secret.yaml' %}

kubectl describe externalsecret example
# [...]
Name:  example
Status:
  Conditions:
    Last Transition Time:  2021-02-24T16:45:23Z
    Message:               Secret was synced
    Reason:                SecretSynced
    Status:                True
    Type:                  Ready
  Refresh Time:            2021-02-24T16:45:24Z
Events:                    <none>

For more advanced examples, please read the other guides.

Uninstalling

Before continuing, ensure that all external-secret resources that have been created by users have been deleted. You can check for any existing resources with the following command:

kubectl get SecretStores,ClusterSecretStores,ExternalSecrets --all-namespaces

Once all these resources have been deleted you are ready to uninstall external-secrets.

Uninstalling with Helm

Uninstall the helm release using the delete command.

helm delete external-secrets --namespace external-secrets