Verifying the Installation

Once you've installed cert-manager, you can verify it is deployed correctly by checking the cert-manager namespace for running pods:

$ kubectl get pods --namespace cert-manager

NAME                                       READY   STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
cert-manager-5c6866597-zw7kh               1/1     Running   0          2m
cert-manager-cainjector-577f6d9fd7-tr77l   1/1     Running   0          2m
cert-manager-webhook-787858fcdb-nlzsq      1/1     Running   0          2m

You should see the cert-manager, cert-manager-cainjector, and cert-manager-webhook pods in a Running state. The webhook might take a little longer to successfully provision than the others.

If you experience problems, first check the FAQ.

The following steps will confirm that cert-manager is set up correctly and able to issue basic certificate types. Alternatively, to automatically check if cert-manager is correctly configured, you can run the community-maintained cert-manager-verifier tool.

Create an Issuer to test the webhook works okay.

$ cat <<EOF > test-resources.yaml
apiVersion: v1
kind: Namespace
metadata:
  name: cert-manager-test
---
apiVersion: cert-manager.io/v1
kind: Issuer
metadata:
  name: test-selfsigned
  namespace: cert-manager-test
spec:
  selfSigned: {}
---
apiVersion: cert-manager.io/v1
kind: Certificate
metadata:
  name: selfsigned-cert
  namespace: cert-manager-test
spec:
  dnsNames:
    - example.com
  secretName: selfsigned-cert-tls
  issuerRef:
    name: test-selfsigned
EOF

Create the test resources.

$ kubectl apply -f test-resources.yaml

Check the status of the newly created certificate. You may need to wait a few seconds before cert-manager processes the certificate request.

$ kubectl describe certificate -n cert-manager-test

...
Spec:
  Common Name:  example.com
  Issuer Ref:
    Name:       test-selfsigned
  Secret Name:  selfsigned-cert-tls
Status:
  Conditions:
    Last Transition Time:  2019-01-29T17:34:30Z
    Message:               Certificate is up to date and has not expired
    Reason:                Ready
    Status:                True
    Type:                  Ready
  Not After:               2019-04-29T17:34:29Z
Events:
  Type    Reason      Age   From          Message
  ----    ------      ----  ----          -------
  Normal  CertIssued  4s    cert-manager  Certificate issued successfully

Clean up the test resources.

$ kubectl delete -f test-resources.yaml

If all the above steps have completed without error, you're good to go!

Configuring your first Issuer

Before you can begin issuing certificates, you must configure at least one Issuer or ClusterIssuer resource in your cluster.

You should read the configuration guide to learn how to configure cert-manager to issue certificates from one of the supported backends.