← Back to Blog

Securing Communication between Kubernetes Microservices within Azure Kubernetes Cluster

In the world of data science, the security of data and communication is paramount. As we increasingly adopt microservices architecture, securing communication between these services becomes a critical concern. This blog post will guide you through the process of securing communication between Kubernetes microservices within an Azure Kubernetes Cluster.
By Saturn Cloud | | Miscellaneous

Securing Communication between Kubernetes Microservices within Azure Kubernetes Cluster

In the world of data science, the security of data and communication is paramount. As we increasingly adopt microservices architecture, securing communication between these services becomes a critical concern. This blog post will guide you through the process of securing communication between Kubernetes microservices within an Azure Kubernetes Cluster.

Introduction

Kubernetes, an open-source platform designed to automate deploying, scaling, and managing containerized applications, has become the de facto standard for container orchestration. Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) simplifies the deployment and operations of Kubernetes. However, securing communication between microservices within an AKS cluster can be a complex task. This post will guide you through the process, focusing on the implementation of service mesh using Azure Service Fabric and Azure Key Vault for secure secrets management.

Implementing Service Mesh with Azure Service Fabric

A service mesh is a dedicated infrastructure layer for handling service-to-service communication. It’s responsible for the reliable delivery of requests through the complex topology of services that comprise a modern, cloud-native application. In Azure, Service Fabric is a distributed systems platform that makes it easy to package, deploy, and manage scalable and reliable microservices.

# Install Azure Service Fabric
az sf cluster create --resource-group myResourceGroup --location eastus --certificate-output-folder . --certificate-password Password#1234 --certificate-subject-name myCluster.eastus.cloudapp.azure.com --cluster-name myCluster --cluster-size 5 --os WindowsServer2016DatacenterwithContainers --vault-name myKeyVault --vault-resource-group myResourceGroup --vm-password Password#1234 --vm-user-name myUserName

Secure Secrets Management with Azure Key Vault

Azure Key Vault is a cloud service for securely storing and accessing secrets. A secret is anything that you want to tightly control access to, such as API keys, passwords, or certificates. Key Vault provides centralized secret management, enabling you to control the distribution of keys and secrets.

# Create a Key Vault
az keyvault create --name myKeyVault --resource-group myResourceGroup --location eastus

# Add a secret to the Key Vault
az keyvault secret set --vault-name myKeyVault --name mySecret --value "mySecretValue"

Integrating Azure Service Fabric and Azure Key Vault

Now that we have our service mesh and secrets management set up, we need to integrate them. We can use Azure Managed Identities to authenticate our services with the Key Vault.

# Create a managed identity
az identity create --name myIdentity --resource-group myResourceGroup

# Assign the identity to the Key Vault
az keyvault set-policy --name myKeyVault --object-id <ManagedIdentityObjectId> --secret-permissions get

Securing Communication

With the service mesh and secrets management in place, we can now secure the communication between our microservices. We can use mutual TLS (mTLS) for this purpose. mTLS not only verifies the server’s identity to the client but also the client’s identity to the server, providing a two-way authentication process.

Azure Service Fabric provides built-in support for mTLS. We can use the secrets stored in Azure Key Vault as our certificates for mTLS.

# Enable mTLS in Service Fabric
az sf cluster certificate add --cluster-name myCluster --resource-group myResourceGroup --vault-name myKeyVault --vault-resource-group myResourceGroup --certificate-url <CertificateURL> --certificate-file myCertificate.pfx --certificate-password Password#1234

Conclusion

Securing communication between microservices within an Azure Kubernetes Cluster involves implementing a service mesh for reliable service-to-service communication and secure secrets management for storing and accessing secrets. Azure provides robust solutions for both these requirements in the form of Azure Service Fabric and Azure Key Vault. By integrating these services and enabling mutual TLS, you can ensure secure communication between your microservices.

Remember, the security of your data and communication is as strong as the weakest link. Therefore, always follow best practices and keep your systems up to date.

References

Tags

Azure, Kubernetes, Microservices, Security, Data Science, Service Mesh, Azure Service Fabric, Azure Key Vault, mTLS

About Saturn Cloud

Saturn Cloud is your all-in-one solution for data science & ML development, deployment, and data pipelines in the cloud. Spin up a notebook with 4TB of RAM, add a GPU, connect to a distributed cluster of workers, and more. Join today and get 150 hours of free compute per month.

Try Saturn Cloud Now