Basic Keycloak deployment

How to install Keycloak using the Operator

Performing a basic Keycloak deployment

This guide describes how to perform a basic Keycloak Deployment on Kubernetes or OpenShift using the Operator.

Preparing for deployment

Once the Keycloak Operator is installed and running in the cluster namespace, you can set up the other deployment prerequisites.

  • Database

  • Hostname

  • TLS Certificate and associated keys

Database

A database should be available and accessible from the cluster namespace where Keycloak is installed. For a list of supported databases, see Configuring the database. The Keycloak Operator does not manage the database and you need to provision it yourself. Consider verifying your cloud provider offering or using a database operator.

For development purposes, you can use an ephemeral PostgreSQL pod installation. To provision it, follow the approach below:

Create YAML file example-postgres.yaml:

apiVersion: apps/v1
kind: StatefulSet
metadata:
  name: postgresql-db
spec:
  serviceName: postgresql-db-service
  selector:
    matchLabels:
      app: postgresql-db
  replicas: 1
  template:
    metadata:
      labels:
        app: postgresql-db
    spec:
      containers:
        - name: postgresql-db
          image: postgres:15
          volumeMounts:
            - mountPath: /data
              name: cache-volume
          env:
            - name: POSTGRES_USER
              value: testuser
            - name: POSTGRES_PASSWORD
              value: testpassword
            - name: PGDATA
              value: /data/pgdata
            - name: POSTGRES_DB
              value: keycloak
      volumes:
        - name: cache-volume
          emptyDir: {}
---
apiVersion: v1
kind: Service
metadata:
  name: postgres-db
spec:
  selector:
    app: postgresql-db
  type: LoadBalancer
  ports:
  - port: 5432
    targetPort: 5432

Apply the changes:

kubectl apply -f example-postgres.yaml

Hostname

For a production ready installation, you need a hostname that can be used to contact Keycloak. See Configuring the hostname (v2) for the available configurations.

For development purposes, this guide will use test.keycloak.org.

When running on OpenShift, with ingress enabled, and with the spec.ingress.classname set to openshift-default, you may leave the spec.hostname.hostname unpopulated in the Keycloak CR. The operator will assign a default hostname to the stored version of the CR similar to what would be created by an OpenShift Route without an explicit host - that is ingress-namespace.appsDomain If the appsDomain changes, or should you need a different hostname for any reason, then update the Keycloak CR.

If you set the hostname-admin, or the deprecated hostname-admin-url, even if you enable ingress, no ingress will be created specifically for admin access. Admin access via a separate hostname is generally expected to have access restrictions, which are not currently expressible via the Keycloak CR. Also the default ingress does not prevent accessing admin endpoints, so you may not want to enable ingress handling via the Keycloak CR at all when you have a separate hostname for admin endpoints.

TLS Certificate and key

See your Certification Authority to obtain the certificate and the key.

For development purposes, you can enter this command to obtain a self-signed certificate:

openssl req -subj '/CN=test.keycloak.org/O=Test Keycloak./C=US' -newkey rsa:2048 -nodes -keyout key.pem -x509 -days 365 -out certificate.pem

You should install it in the cluster namespace as a Secret by entering this command:

kubectl create secret tls example-tls-secret --cert certificate.pem --key key.pem

Deploying Keycloak

To deploy Keycloak, you create a Custom Resource (CR) based on the Keycloak Custom Resource Definition (CRD).

Consider storing the Database credentials in a separate Secret. Enter the following commands:

kubectl create secret generic keycloak-db-secret \
  --from-literal=username=[your_database_username] \
  --from-literal=password=[your_database_password]

You can customize several fields using the Keycloak CRD. For a basic deployment, you can stick to the following approach:

Create YAML file example-kc.yaml:

apiVersion: k8s.keycloak.org/v2alpha1
kind: Keycloak
metadata:
  name: example-kc
spec:
  instances: 1
  db:
    vendor: postgres
    host: postgres-db
    usernameSecret:
      name: keycloak-db-secret
      key: username
    passwordSecret:
      name: keycloak-db-secret
      key: password
  http:
    tlsSecret: example-tls-secret
  hostname:
    hostname: test.keycloak.org
  proxy:
    headers: xforwarded # double check your reverse proxy sets and overwrites the X-Forwarded-* headers

Apply the changes:

kubectl apply -f example-kc.yaml

To check that the Keycloak instance has been provisioned in the cluster, check the status of the created CR by entering the following command:

kubectl get keycloaks/example-kc -o go-template='{{range .status.conditions}}CONDITION: {{.type}}{{"\n"}}  STATUS: {{.status}}{{"\n"}}  MESSAGE: {{.message}}{{"\n"}}{{end}}'

When the deployment is ready, look for output similar to the following:

CONDITION: Ready
  STATUS: true
  MESSAGE:
CONDITION: HasErrors
  STATUS: false
  MESSAGE:
CONDITION: RollingUpdate
  STATUS: false
  MESSAGE:

Accessing the Keycloak deployment

The Keycloak deployment is exposed through a basic Ingress and is accessible through the provided hostname. On installations with multiple default IngressClass instances or when running on OpenShift 4.12+ you should provide an ingressClassName by setting ingress spec with className property to the desired class name:

Edit YAML file example-kc.yaml:

apiVersion: k8s.keycloak.org/v2alpha1
kind: Keycloak
metadata:
  name: example-kc
spec:
    ...
    ingress:
      className: openshift-default

If the default ingress does not fit your use case, disable it by setting ingress spec with enabled property to false value:

Edit YAML file example-kc.yaml:

apiVersion: k8s.keycloak.org/v2alpha1
kind: Keycloak
metadata:
  name: example-kc
spec:
    ...
    ingress:
      enabled: false

Apply the changes:

kubectl apply -f example-kc.yaml

You can provide an alternative ingress resource pointing to the service <keycloak-cr-name>-service.

For debugging and development purposes, consider directly connecting to the Keycloak service using a port forward. For example, enter this command:

kubectl port-forward service/example-kc-service 8443:8443

Configuring the reverse proxy settings matching your Ingress Controller

The Operator supports configuring which of the reverse proxy headers should be accepted by server, which includes Forwarded and X-Forwarded-* headers.

If you Ingress implementation sets and overwrites either Forwarded or X-Forwarded-* headers, you can reflect that in the Keycloak CR as follows:

apiVersion: k8s.keycloak.org/v2alpha1
kind: Keycloak
metadata:
  name: example-kc
spec:
  ...
  proxy:
    headers: forwarded|xforwarded
If the proxy.headers field is not specified, the Operator falls back to legacy behaviour by implicitly setting proxy=passthrough by default. This results in deprecation warnings in the server log. This fallback will be removed in a future release.
When using the proxy.headers field, make sure your Ingress properly sets and overwrites the Forwarded or X-Forwarded-* headers respectively. To set these headers, consult the documentation for your Ingress Controller. Consider configuring it for either reencrypt or edge TLS termination as passthrough TLS doesn’t allow the Ingress to modify the requests headers. Misconfiguration will leave Keycloak exposed to security vulnerabilities.

For more details refer to the Using a reverse proxy guide.

Accessing the Admin Console

When deploying Keycloak, the operator generates an arbitrary initial admin username and password and stores those credentials as a basic-auth Secret object in the same namespace as the CR.

Change the default admin credentials and enable MFA in Keycloak before going to production.

To fetch the initial admin credentials, you have to read and decode the Secret. The Secret name is derived from the Keycloak CR name plus the fixed suffix -initial-admin. To get the username and password for the example-kc CR, enter the following commands:

kubectl get secret example-kc-initial-admin -o jsonpath='{.data.username}' | base64 --decode
kubectl get secret example-kc-initial-admin -o jsonpath='{.data.password}' | base64 --decode

You can use those credentials to access the Admin Console or the Admin REST API.

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