Vault agent

Use case

Because installing the vault agent just for the sake of it is useless, we are going to try to use the vault agent to dynamically get some consul ACL token so we can configure a local consul agent

This article will not cover the deployment of the consul server.

Required steps

1. Install vault
2. Prepare for a way for the vault to auth against your vault server instance
3. Produce an agent.hcl configuration
4. Run vault in agent mode

Installing vault

Either download the binary from vault website or install hashicorp repository in your package manager. This blog will provide with all the information you need to set your system.

We'll follow Debian flavoured linux instructions.

• Install the apt key

  curl -fsSL https://apt.releases.hashicorp.com/gpg | sudo apt-key add -

• Add the repo

  sudo apt-add-repository "deb [arch=amd64] https://apt.releases.hashicorp.com $(lsb_release -cs) main"

  If you don't have lsb_release on your system, issue apt install -y lsb-release.

• Update the apt cache with apt update

Now you should be cleared to install vault with apt install -y vault

Vault agent authentication

Vault agent has several ways to establish a secure communication with its server instance. Because we run this in a private lab we can't leverage any major cloud provider systems. We will go with classic AppRole