Enable Multiple Domain TLS for MinIO

MinIO supports Transport Layer Security (TLS) 1.2+ encryption of incoming and outgoing traffic.

Kubernetes

The MinIO Operator supports the following approaches to enabling TLS on a MinIO Tenant:

Automatic TLS provisioning using Kubernetes Cluster Signing Certificates
User-specified TLS using Kubernetes secrets
Certmanager-managed TLS certificates

The MinIO Operator supports attaching user-specified TLS certificates when deploying or modifying the MinIO Tenant.

These custom certificates support Server Name Indication (SNI), where the MinIO server identifies which certificate to use based on the hostname specified by the connecting client. For example, you can generate certificates signed by your organization’s preferred Certificate Authority (CA) and attach those to the MinIO Tenant. Applications which trust that CA can connect to the MinIO Tenant and fully validate the Tenant TLS certificates.

Baremetal

MinIO automatically detects TLS certificates in the configured or default directory and starts with TLS enabled.

The MinIO server supports multiple TLS certificates, where the server uses Server Name Indication (SNI) to identify which certificate to use when responding to a client request. When a client connects using a specific hostname, MinIO uses SNI to select the appropriate TLS certificate for that hostname.

This procedure documents enabling TLS for multiple domains in MinIO. For instructions on TLS for single domains, see TODO

Prerequisites

Access to MinIO Cluster

Kubernetes

You must have access to the Kubernetes cluster, with administrative permissions associated to your kubectl configuration.

This procedure assumes your permission sets extends sufficiently to support deployment or modification of MinIO-associated resources on the Kubernetes cluster, including but not limited to pods, statefulsets, replicasets, deployments, and secrets.

Baremetal

This procedure uses mc for performing operations on the MinIO cluster. Install mc on a machine with network access to the cluster. See the mc Installation Quickstart for instructions on downloading and installing mc.

This procedure assumes a configured alias for the MinIO cluster.

This procedure also assumes SSH or similar shell-level access with administrative permissions to each MinIO host server.

TLS Certificates

Provision the necessary TLS certificates with a supported cipher suite for use by MinIO.

Kubernetes

See MinIO TLS on Kubernetes for more complete guidance on the supported Tenant TLS configurations.

Baremetal

Provision certificate susing your preferred path, such as through your organizations internal Certificate Authority or by using a well-known global provider such as Digicert or Verisign.

You can create self-signed certificates using openssl or the MinIO certgen tool.

For example, the following command generates a self-signed certificate with a set of IP and DNS Subject Alternate Names (SANs) associated to the MinIO Server hosts:

certgen -host "localhost,minio-*.example.net"

See MinIO TLS on Baremetal for more complete guidance on certificate generation and placement.

Procedure

Kubernetes

The MinIO Operator supports three methods of TLS certificate management on MinIO Tenants:

MinIO automatic TLS certificate generation
User-specified TLS certificates
cert-manager managed TLS certificates

You can also deploy MinIO Tenants without TLS enabled.

MinIO Auto-TLS

The following steps apply to both new and existing MinIO Deployments using Kustomize:

Review the Tenant CRD TenantSpec.requestAutoCert and TenantSpec.certConfig fields.

For existing MinIO Tenants, review the Kustomize resources used to create the Tenant and introspect those fields and their current configuration, if any.
Create or Modify your Tenant YAML to set the values of requestAutoCert and certConfig as necessary. For example:
```
spec:
   requestAutoCert: true
   certConfig:
     commonName: "CN=MinioTenantCommonName"
     organizationName: "O=MyOrganizationName"
     dnsNames:
       - 'minio-tenant.domain.tld'
       - '*.kubernete.cluster.dns.path.tld'
```
The spec.certConfig.dnsNames should contain a list of SAN the TLS certificate covers.

See the Kustomize Tenant base YAML for a baseline template for guidance in creating or modifying your Tenant resource.
Apply the new Kustomization template

Once you apply the changes, the MinIO Operator automatically redeploys the Tenant with the updated configuration.

CertManager

The following steps apply to both new and existing MinIO Deployments using Kustomize:

Review the Tenant CRD TenantSpec.externalCertsCecret fields

For existing MinIO Tenants, review the Kustomize resources used to create the Tenant and introspect that field’s current configuration, if any.

Create or Modify your Tenant YAML to reference the appropriate cert-manager resources.

For example, the following Tenant YAML fragment references a cert-manager resource myminio-tls:

apiVersion: minio.min.io/v2
kind: Tenant
metadata:
name: myminio
namespace: minio-tenant
spec:
   ## Disable default tls certificates.
   requestAutoCert: false
   ## Use certificates generated by cert-manager.
   externalCertSecret:
      - name: default-domain
        type: cert-manager.io/v1
      - name: internal-domain
        type: cert-manager.io/v1
      - name: external-domain
        type: cert-manager.io/v1

Apply the new Kustomization Template

Once you apply the changes, the MinIO Operator automatically redeploys the Tenant with the updated configuration.

User-Specified

The following steps apply to both new and existing MinIO deployments using Kustomize:

Review the Tenant CRD TenantSpec.externalCertSecret field.

For existing MinIO Tenants, review the Kustomize resources used to create the Tenant and introspect that field’s current configuration, if any.

Create or modify your Tenant YAML to reference a secret of type kubernetes.io/tls:

For example, the following Tenant YAML fragment references two TLS secrets for each domain for which the MinIO Tenant accepts connections:

apiVersion: minio.min.io/v2
kind: Tenant
metadata:
name: myminio
namespace: minio-tenant
spec:
   ## Disable default tls certificates.
   requestAutoCert: false
   ## Use certificates generated by cert-manager.
   externalCertSecret:
   - name: domain-certificate-1
   type: kubernetes.io/tls
   - name: domain-certificate-2
   type: kubernetes.io/tls

Apply the new Kustomization Template

Once you apply the changes, the MinIO Operator automatically redeploys the Tenant with the updated configuration.

Baremetal

The MinIO Server searches for TLS keys and certificates for each node and uses those credentials for enabling TLS. MinIO automatically enables TLS upon discovery and validation of certificates. The search location depends on your MinIO configuration:

Default Path

By default, the MinIO server looks for the TLS keys and certificates for each node in the following directory:

${HOME}/.minio/certs

Where ${HOME} is the home directory of the user running the MinIO Server process. You may need to create the ${HOME}/.minio/certs directory if it does not exist.

For systemd managed deployments this must correspond to the USER running the MinIO process. If that user has no home directory, use the Custom Path option instead.

Custom Path

You can specify a path for the MinIO server to search for certificates using the minio server --certs-dir or -S parameter.

For example, the following command fragment directs the MinIO process to use the /opt/minio/certs directory for TLS certificates.

minio server --certs-dir /opt/minio/certs ...

The user running the MinIO service must have read and write permissions to this directory.

Place the certificates in the /certs folder, creating a subfolder in /certs for each additional domain for which MinIO should present TLS certificates. While MinIO has no requirements for folder names, consider creating subfolders whose name matches the domain to improve human readability. Place the TLS private and public key for that domain in the subfolder.

/path/to/certs
   private.key
   public.crt
   s3-example.net/
      private.key
      public.crt
   internal-example.net/
      private.key
      public.crt