Kubernetes service provider Jetstack is donating its open-source certificate management project to the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF). Cert-manager will join the CNCF as a sandbox project.
The solution is designed as an “add-on” to Kubernetes, and automates the management and issuance of TLS certifications. It can be used programmatically by Kubernetes-native apps as well as the CSI driver.
“Cert-manager enables developers to easily request machine identities to secure applications. Certificates can be signed by public and private certificate authorities such as Let’s Encrypt and Venafi, and cert-manager handles the automation of the certificate lifecycle,” Matthew Bates, CTO and co-founder of Jetstack, explained in a blog post. “This means developers can move fast and stay secure, while platform and security teams have control and visibility. The popularity of cert manager within the Kubernetes community and its utility in a wide range of projects makes cert-manager an ideal project for the CNCF.”
The company recently reached version 1.0 after three years of development on the project.
“In these 3 years cert-manager has grown in functionality and stability, but mostly in the community. Today we see many people using cert-manager to secure their Kubernetes clusters, as well as cert-manager being integrated into many other parts in the ecosystem,” the team wrote in its release notes.
Going forward, the team plans to add support for a broader set of use cases, upstream APIs, and enable granular control over certificate issues.
