Why should I mount a secret or configmap in Kubernetes

user_5256668 0
Viewed 298

In kubernetes POD I have an option to mount a secret or a configmap as a volume mounted to the POD. It would be difficult to access these files as environment variables. So why should I be doing it instead of using them as environment variables?

volumes kubernetes-secrets configmap kubernetes
2 Answers

This depends on how the application expect to load the secret.

E.g. if the application expect to load an SSL certificate file, it is possible to have the certificated as a file in a Secret and mount the Secret so that the application can read it as file.

user_2132690

You don't have to always mount the secret or configmap. You can use them too set the environment variables as shown below

      envFrom:
      - configMapRef:
          name: env-configmap
      - secretRef:
          name: env-secrets

However, there are situations when you might want to mount them as files. For example:

  1. You want to keep your nginx.conf decoupled from your docker image.
  2. Put your SSL Certs (cert + private keys) in secret to enable SSL on your web application
user_27779880
Related