Managing API Keys for AI Services with Kubernetes Secrets

Question

Pulumi · Accepted Answer

Kubernetes secrets are a way to store and manage sensitive data such as passwords, OAuth tokens, and ssh keys. Using secrets is safer and more flexible than putting confidential data directly into a pod definition or a Docker image.

In Kubernetes, a Secret is an object that contains a small amount of sensitive data such as a password, a token, or a key. Such information might otherwise be put in a pod specification or in an image. Users can create secrets, and the system also creates some secrets.

To manage API keys for AI services using Kubernetes secrets, we will create a Kubernetes Secret resource that holds our API keys. We will then reference this secret in our pod specification, where our application is running, so that it can use the API key without the application itself needing to know what the key is.

Here is a step-by-step Python program using Pulumi to create a Kubernetes Secret that holds an API key:

```python
import pulumi
import pulumi_kubernetes as k8s

# Create a Kubernetes Secret to store an API key for our AI services
# Replace 'my-api-key' and 'api-key-value' with your actual API key name and value.
api_key_secret = k8s.core.v1.Secret(
    "api-key-secret",
    metadata={
        "name": "my-api-key"
    },
    # Secrets data are dictionaries where each key is the secret name
    # and each value is base64 encoded string of the secret data.
    # Pulumi will automatically encode the string for us.
    string_data={
        "api-key-value": "very-secret-value"  # Replace with your actual API key.
    }
)

# Export the name of the secret
pulumi.export('secret_name', api_key_secret.metadata['name'])
```

In this program, we first import the required modules, `pulumi` and `pulumi_kubernetes`. We then use the `pulumi_kubernetes as k8s` module to create a new Kubernetes Secret named `api-key-secret`.

The `metadata` field is a dictionary containing the name of the secret. Replace `'my-api-key'` with a suitable name for the secret.

The `string_data` field is a dictionary where the key is the name of the key within the secret, and the value is the sensitive data you want to store—here, our API key. You need to replace `'api-key-value'` with the name you want for the key in the secret and `'very-secret-value'` with your actual API key.

Finally, the `pulumi.export` line is used to print the secret's name after the Pulumi program is executed, which can be helpful for debugging purposes or for referencing the secret in other Pulumi programs.

By using Kubernetes secrets, you can manage your AI service's API keys securely and ensure that sensitive data is not exposed in your application code or configuration.