A Smooth Sea Never Made a Skillful Sailor

CockroachDB out of the box comes with ability to generate certificates with cockroach cert command. This command will provision certs for client and nodes. One common gap we get from our customers is the explicit reliance on CN=node and CN=root . In our latest development release, we're introducing ability to map root and node principals to custom CNs. The process bypasses cockroach cert command in favor of openssl utility. It is very well documented and I recorded a live walk-through of the entire process. I am including my openssl configuration files for convenience: ca.cnf # OpenSSL CA configuration file [ ca ] default_ca = CA_default [ CA_default ] default_days = 365 database = index.txt serial = serial.txt default_md = sha256 copy_extensions = copy unique_subject = no # Used to create the CA certificate. [ req ] prompt=no distinguished_name = distinguished_name x509_extensions = extensions [ distinguished_name ] organizationName = Example Inc commonName = Exampl...

I came across an interesting scenario last week. A customer had asked whether it is possible to secure a previously insecure cluster. The short answer is yes. Now, Cockroach Labs does not recommend running an insecure cluster in production. There are only a few additional steps necessary to secure an instance, so why do it? Convenience, you say. It can hurt you down the line but fret not, this article will demonstrate how to fix this. We are going to follow the standard insecure cluster start up procedure . Once complete, we're going to flip to the documentation for a secure cluster to turn each node on with security enabled. Here's a handy video of the procedure in action: I also included the step by step instructions below: