Reproduce the validated hardened ACME lane while keeping OpenBao as the TLS endpoint all the way through the local edge.

This recipe stands up the local hardened ACME baseline with tenant onboarding, a shared trust-services dependency for Transit and ACME, an internal ACME CA, and a user-managed passthrough route that preserves tls-alpn-01 behavior.

This recipe should leave you with

• an onboarded tenant namespace and admin ServiceAccount
• a trust Secret that carries both the Transit CA bundle and the private ACME issuer trust root
• a hardened cluster that self-initializes, unseals with Transit, and serves ACME traffic through passthrough
• conditions and services that prove ACME is working before you move to a public cloud lane

Validated lane

This recipe follows the local ACME lifecycle covered by the in-repo ACME suite and the project validation environment. The tested path covers private ACME trust material, Transit auto-unseal, ACME readiness, and human admin JWT access.

Use the main docs for generic behavior

Use external access, network configuration, and TLS and workload identity for the product-wide explanation. This recipe captures the exact validated local lane.

Decision matrix

What this lane assumes

What this lane assumes.

Assumption	Why it exists	What breaks if it is wrong
Multi-tenant operator install with admission enabled	The validated path starts from the standard tenant-onboarding flow.	Namespace provisioning and hardened policy enforcement will drift from the tested lane.
The external trust-services endpoint exposes both Transit and an ACME directory	One dependency owns both the seal root and the private certificate issuance path.	You will not reproduce the lane if Transit and ACME trust material come from unrelated systems.
The external hostname resolves back to the passthrough edge	tls-alpn-01 only works when the validator reaches the hostname that OpenBao serves.	ACME will fail even though the cluster itself is healthy and the route object exists.
The ingress layer supports TLS passthrough on port 443	OpenBao must terminate TLS itself in this lane.	Any edge termination in front of OpenBao breaks the ACME contract immediately.

Reference table

Inputs to replace before apply

Inputs to replace before apply.

Placeholder	Example	Purpose
<namespace>	openbaocluster-acme	Tenant namespace for the cluster.
<cluster-name>	openbaocluster-acme	OpenBaoCluster name.
<openbao-version>	2.5.0	OpenBao version.
<transit-address>	https://trust-services.openbao-infra.svc:8200	Transit provider URL.
<acme-directory-url>	https://trust-services.openbao-infra.svc:8200/v1/pki/acme/directory	ACME directory URL.
<transit-key>	openbao-unseal	Transit key name.
<external-host>	bao-acme.example.com	External hostname used for clients and ACME validation.
<operator-namespace>	openbao-operator-system	Namespace that hosts the central OpenBaoTenant resource.

Step 1: Onboard the tenant namespace

Apply

Create the namespace, onboarding request, and admin ServiceAccount

yaml

apiVersion: v1
kind: Namespace
metadata:
name: <namespace>
labels:
  openbao.org/tenant: "true"
---
apiVersion: openbao.org/v1alpha1
kind: OpenBaoTenant
metadata:
name: <cluster-name>-tenant
namespace: <operator-namespace>
spec:
targetNamespace: <namespace>
---
apiVersion: v1
kind: ServiceAccount
metadata:
name: openbao-admin
namespace: <namespace>

Verify

Wait for tenant provisioning

bash

kubectl -n <operator-namespace> describe openbaotenant <cluster-name>-tenant

The steady-state expectation is Provisioned=True.

Step 2: Create the Transit and ACME trust Secret

Apply

Create the Secret used by Transit and the private ACME issuer

bash

kubectl -n <namespace> create secret generic trust-services-token \
--from-literal=token='<transit-token>' \
--from-file=ca.crt=/path/to/trust-services-ca.crt \
--from-file=pki-ca.crt=/path/to/acme-issuer-ca.crt

The validated path expects token, ca.crt, and pki-ca.crt in the same Secret so Transit and ACME trust material stay aligned.

Step 3: Expose the ACME challenge Service with passthrough

Apply

Create the user-managed passthrough route

yaml

apiVersion: traefik.io/v1alpha1
kind: IngressRouteTCP
metadata:
name: bao-acme
namespace: <namespace>
spec:
entryPoints:
  - websecure
routes:
  - match: HostSNI(`<external-host>`)
    services:
      - name: <cluster-name>-acme
        port: 443
tls:
  passthrough: true

tls.mode: ACME requires passthrough. If the edge terminates TLS first, OpenBao cannot complete ACME challenges.

Step 4: Apply the hardened ACME cluster

Apply

Apply the validated hardened ACME manifest

yaml

apiVersion: openbao.org/v1alpha1
kind: OpenBaoCluster
metadata:
name: <cluster-name>
namespace: <namespace>
spec:
profile: Hardened
replicas: 3
version: "<openbao-version>"

storage:
  size: "10Gi"
deletionPolicy: Retain

tls:
  enabled: true
  mode: ACME
  acme:
    directoryURL: "<acme-directory-url>"
    domains:
      - "<cluster-name>-acme.<namespace>.svc"
      - "<external-host>"
    email: "admin@example.invalid"

configuration:
  logLevel: "info"
  ui: true
  logging:
    format: "json"
  acmeCARoot: "/etc/bao/seal-creds/ca.crt"

unseal:
  type: transit
  credentialsSecretRef:
    name: trust-services-token
  transit:
    address: "<transit-address>"
    mountPath: "transit"
    keyName: "<transit-key>"
    tlsCACert: "/etc/bao/seal-creds/ca.crt"

selfInit:
  enabled: true
  oidc:
    enabled: true
  requests:
    - name: enable-jwt-auth
      operation: update
      path: sys/auth/jwt
      authMethod:
        type: jwt
    - name: create-admin-policy
      operation: update
      path: sys/policies/acl/admin
      policy:
        policy: |
          path "*" {
            capabilities = ["create", "read", "update", "delete", "list", "sudo"]
          }
    - name: create-admin-jwt-role
      operation: update
      path: auth/jwt/role/admin
      data:
        role_type: jwt
        user_claim: sub
        bound_audiences:
          - openbao-internal
        bound_subject: system:serviceaccount:<namespace>:openbao-admin
        token_policies:
          - admin
        policies:
          - admin
        ttl: 1h

upgrade:
  strategy: RollingUpdate

Internal `.svc` domain

The internal .svc hostname in spec.tls.acme.domains gives the local lane a stable service name for certificate issuance and cluster-internal joins while the external hostname stays present in the SAN set.

AppArmor on local clusters

If kubelet rejects the Pods because AppArmor is unavailable, add:

spec:
  workloadHardening:
    appArmorEnabled: false

Verify the lane

Verify

Check the cluster conditions

bash

kubectl -n <namespace> get openbaocluster <cluster-name> \
-o jsonpath='{range .status.conditions[*]}{.type}={.status}{" reason="}{.reason}{"\n"}{end}'

The steady-state expectation is Available=True, ACMEIntegrationReady=True, ACMECacheReady=True, UserAccessBootstrap=True, ProductionReady=True, OpenBaoInitialized=True, and OpenBaoSealed=False.

Verify

Verify that the ACME Service exists and no external TLS Secret is required

bash

kubectl -n <namespace> get svc <cluster-name>-acme
kubectl -n <namespace> get secret <cluster-name>-tls-server

The service should exist. The Secret lookup should return NotFound, because OpenBao manages the leaf certificate itself in this lane.

Verify

Verify JWT admin login

bash

kubectl -n <namespace> port-forward svc/<cluster-name> 8200:8200
export VAULT_ADDR="https://127.0.0.1:8200"
JWT="$(kubectl -n <namespace> create token openbao-admin --audience openbao-internal --duration=1h)"

curl -sS -k \
-H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
-d "{\"role\":\"admin\",\"jwt\":\"${JWT}\"}" \
${VAULT_ADDR%/}/v1/auth/jwt/login

Keep moving

Reference architectureReview the lane summary, topology, and invariants behind this local ACME path.Troubleshoot the clusterUse the incident routing page if ACME domain reachability or certificate readiness does not settle.EKS HardenedMove to the cloud baseline when you need public ACME, KMS auto-unseal, and a dedicated passthrough Gateway.