Stéphane Tailland
f0363748b6
A deployment's workflow environment usually comes from more than one owner — credentials the platform holds, and credentials the workflows' own estate holds. Both slots are optional, so an unused one needs no placeholder Secret. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
96 lines
4.4 KiB
Markdown
96 lines
4.4 KiB
Markdown
# infra-n8n
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A reusable n8n deployment: Postgres, the workload, TLS and an ingress, with
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every environment value left as a `${VAR}` for the caller to substitute.
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**Nothing here is specific to a deployment.** No hostname, no issuer, no Vault
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path, no image tag. A consumer supplies those through its own Flux
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`Kustomization` and its `postBuild.substitute` block — the same shape used for
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any templated estate. This repo is the template; it is not itself deployed.
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## Using it
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Create, in the repo that owns the deployment:
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```yaml
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apiVersion: source.toolkit.fluxcd.io/v1
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kind: GitRepository
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metadata: { name: infra-n8n, namespace: <ns> }
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spec:
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interval: 5m
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url: <this repo>
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ref: { branch: main }
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---
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apiVersion: kustomize.toolkit.fluxcd.io/v1
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kind: Kustomization
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metadata: { name: n8n, namespace: <ns> }
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spec:
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interval: 10m
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sourceRef: { kind: GitRepository, name: infra-n8n }
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path: ./k8s
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prune: true
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wait: true
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postBuild:
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substitute:
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NAMESPACE: <ns>
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# … every variable in the table below
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```
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The namespace must exist first, and so must the AppRole Secret the store reads.
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## Variables
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| Variable | What it is |
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|---|---|
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| `NAMESPACE` | where everything lands |
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| `N8N_HOSTNAME` | the public host. It goes into `WEBHOOK_URL` and the editor's links, so it must be what callers outside the cluster use — an in-cluster name here produces webhooks nothing can call |
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| `N8N_IMAGE`, `POSTGRES_IMAGE` | pinned images, tag included |
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| `N8N_STORAGE`, `POSTGRES_STORAGE` | claim sizes, e.g. `2Gi`, `5Gi` |
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| `TIMEZONE` | e.g. `Europe/Paris`; drives cron triggers |
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| `INGRESS_CLASS`, `INGRESS_BODY_SIZE` | e.g. `nginx`, `"50m"` |
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| `TLS_ISSUER_NAME`, `TLS_ISSUER_KIND` | a cert-manager issuer, e.g. `ClusterIssuer` |
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| `VAULT_SERVER`, `VAULT_MOUNT`, `VAULT_SECRET_PATH` | where the two secrets live |
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| `VAULT_STORE_NAME`, `VAULT_APPROLE_SECRET` | the `ClusterSecretStore` this creates, and the AppRole Secret in `external-secrets` it authenticates with |
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| `EXTRA_ENV_SECRET`, `EXTRA_ENV_SECRET_2` | Secrets whose keys become environment variables for workflows. Two slots, because a deployment's environment usually comes from more than one owner. Both `optional`, so an unused slot needs no placeholder |
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| `EXTRA_CA_CONFIGMAP` | a ConfigMap with `ca.crt`, mounted and set as `NODE_EXTRA_CA_CERTS`, so workflows can call internal TLS endpoints without verification being disabled. Marked `optional`, so an absent one is not an error |
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| `BLOCK_ENV_ACCESS` | `"true"` blocks `$env` in workflow expressions. n8n's default, and the right one wherever more than one team writes workflows: any workflow can otherwise read any variable in the pod. `"false"` is how a secret reaches a workflow without being committed in its JSON |
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| `EXECUTIONS_MAX_AGE_HOURS` | how long executions are kept. n8n keeps them for ever by default, which turns the database into a log |
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## Two secrets, both of which must outlive any pod
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Read from `VAULT_SECRET_PATH` as a whole, so the entry must hold exactly:
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- `DB_PASSWORD`
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- `N8N_ENCRYPTION_KEY` — encrypts the credentials n8n stores in its database.
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**Never regenerate it.** A new key does not re-encrypt what is stored; it
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orphans it. The workflows survive, every credential in them does not.
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The AppRole's policy should reach `VAULT_SECRET_PATH` and nothing else, so a
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workload here cannot read another deployment's secrets. The commands are in
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`k8s/secrets/clustersecretstore.yaml`.
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## Choices worth knowing
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**One replica, and `strategy: Recreate`.** n8n separates editor from workers
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only in queue mode, which needs Redis; without it a second replica is two
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schedulers racing over the same cron triggers. And the data volume is
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ReadWriteOnce, so a rolling update deadlocks — the new pod waiting for a volume
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the old one has not released.
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**Postgres is a StatefulSet with a `volumeClaimTemplate`.** The claim is not
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deleted with the workload, so losing the database to a `kubectl delete` takes
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more than one mistake.
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**The certificate is issued, never committed.** The private key is generated in
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the cluster and rotated by cert-manager.
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## What this repo deliberately does not do
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**Authentication.** n8n's own user management is left at its defaults. A fresh
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instance is *unclaimed*: anyone who can reach it can create the owner account.
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Claim it immediately, and put it behind an identity-aware proxy or n8n's SSO
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before it holds anything that matters.
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**Backups.** The Postgres claim survives a delete of the workload; it does not
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survive the cluster.
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