Quick Installation of Vault and Consul

Apr 01, 18

I would like to cover a quick and simple setup of Consul and Vault for learning purpose. These steps short circuit a real world advanced setup options.

Download the proper package for you OS and the architecture from

Download Consul https://www.consul.io/downloads.html Download Vault https://www.vaultproject.io/downloads.html

Consul Setup - write a shell or batch file with following command E.g. consul_start.bat with following content

Consul Startup command

consul agent -ui -server -data-dir mydata -advertise 127.0.0.1 -bootstrap-expect 1

Vault Setup - write a shell or batch file with following command E.g. consul_start.bat with following content

consul_start.bat

> vault server -config=vault-example.hcl

vault-example.hcl content

 backend "consul" {
 address="127.0.0.1:8500"
 path="vault"
 }
 listener "tcp" {
  address = "127.0.0.1:8200"
  tls_disable = 1
 }
 disable_mlock = true

Initialize Vault

vault operator init

Error initializing: Put https://127.0.0.1:8200/v1/sys/init: http: server gave HTTP response to HTTPS client [0m The default address of the client uses https. Just set the -address parameter or set the VAULT_ADDRESS env var and you’ll be good to go.

Set Vault Address

set VAULT_ADDR=http://127.0.0.1:8200 vault operator init -key-shares=5 -key-threshold=2

-key-threshold - This defines the number of keys required to unseal vault -key-shares - This defines number of keys that should be generated during initialization

Sample Output

[0;0mUnseal Key 1: 45MbjNghzYmFjaagC5Fcx4qj5E2jOl5ZWYByFctXV+T3 [0m [0;0mUnseal Key 2: Z/TffCSL0mUw4NbMbHpf0dEjGge5iSZja6C7dEoY1AP1 [0m [0;0mUnseal Key 3: C5YvqiPS20VgtiPPDuqgEwsAt6+qPE0+qO7P8zyqCEJf [0m [0;0mUnseal Key 4: WLazf5dhHIQUSnOLLi5z29WFaLwD9ap9XASKbgHXXuc0 [0m [0;0mUnseal Key 5: O1fgO9aT38klIVemz6q5WCXlpQaFS4jjxByaACco9Ga4 [0m [0;0m [0m [0;0mInitial Root Token: 4360d91f-cf9d-a33f-45ca-2bdc699caef1 [0m

Make a note of at least two Unseal keys and your root keys unseal is a one time process as long as your backend does not change.

Now, let us unseal by running this command twice, provide atleast two unique unseal key from the init operation

Unseal Vault Command

vault operator unseal

Unseal Key (will be hidden):

vault login

Now , let us run commands to store and retrieve key/value sercrets

Vault Command to encrypt and decrypt

vault.exe write secret/my-app/s3password value=s3qwqwq vault.exe read secret/my-app/s3password

You may also login from the UI and navigate to view the stored key/values http://localhost:8500/ui/