How-to: Enable the Barbican Operator NetworkPolicy

This guide walks an operator through opting in to the chart-level NetworkPolicy that restricts the barbican-operator pod's egress and ingress to the minimum required for correct reconciliation.

Scope. This guide covers the NetworkPolicy that protects the operator pod itself. For the per-CR NetworkPolicy that protects the Barbican API pods (spec.networkPolicy on a Barbican CR), see the Barbican CRD API Reference. That per-CR policy restricts ingress to TCP 9311 from the sources you list (at least one is required, so an empty list is refused) and derives its egress from the CR: DNS, the database, the Keystone endpoint's port, the cache, and the OpenBao servers of its attached secret stores, with additionalEgress appended after it.

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Prerequisites

Devstack

This guide is written against the Quick Start (ControlPlane) devstack. Stand it up first:

KIND_HOST_PORT=8443 WITH_CONTROLPLANE=true make deploy-infra

Follow that tutorial through to its final Verify step, so the barbican-operator is running (namespace barbican-system) alongside the projected controlplane-barbican key manager.

1. A CNI that enforces networking.k8s.io/v1 NetworkPolicy (required for real enforcement). Confirm with your platform team (Calico, Cilium, and Antrea enforce).

   The devstack enforces this policy

   The ControlPlane Quick Start kind devstack runs kind's default kindnet CNI. On kind v0.32 and later, kindnet enforces NetworkPolicy and evaluates a connection to a Service after the Service DNAT, so a kubeApiServer rule that misses the API server's endpoint address cuts the operator off on the devstack too. Step 2 below confirms the policy's shape and that the operator still reconciles under it. It sends no traffic outside the allow-list, so it does not prove that such traffic is dropped.

2. A running barbican-operator Helm release (namespace barbican-system).

3. The ControlPlane declares spec.services.barbican. Without it no controlplane-barbican child exists and the Step 2 verification has nothing to roll. See Run Barbican on a Dedicated OpenBao.

Step 1 — Enable the policy

The chart guards networkPolicy.enabled=true with a fail-closed check: networkPolicy.kubeApiServer.cidrs and ports must both be non-empty, or the template refuses to render. Gather the API server CIDRs and ports from the kubernetes Endpoints, the real API server addresses, not the 10.96.0.1 Service VIP that kubectl get service kubernetes reports. An enforcing CNI (Calico, Cilium, and kindnet on kind v0.32 and later) evaluates policy after the Service DNAT has rewritten a packet aimed at the VIP to one of those endpoint IPs, so a rule naming the VIP never matches:

kubectl get endpoints kubernetes -n default -o json \
  | jq -r '.subsets[] | (.addresses[].ip) as $ip | (.ports[].port) as $p | "\($ip)/32 port=\($p)"'

Record every endpoint IP the command prints, not just the first. A kind devstack reports the one control-plane node's address on the kind bridge (172.18.0.x), but an HA control plane reports one per API server replica:

10.0.0.10/32 port=6443
10.0.0.11/32 port=6443
10.0.0.12/32 port=6443

The rule must cover all of them, or the operator loses its leader-election lease whenever it happens to be talking to an excluded replica.

On the tutorial devstacks the barbican-operator release is owned by Flux (a HelmRelease), so set the values by patching its spec.values, not with a raw helm upgrade, which the Flux helm-controller reverts on its next reconcile. Substitute the CIDRs and ports from above. The single-CIDR list below stands in for the kind case (one control-plane node), so replace 172.18.0.2/32 with the address you recorded and extend the list to every IP an HA control plane prints:

kubectl patch helmrelease barbican-operator -n barbican-system --type=merge \
  -p '{"spec":{"values":{"networkPolicy":{"enabled":true,"kubeApiServer":{"cidrs":["172.18.0.2/32"],"ports":[6443]}}}}}'

kubectl wait helmrelease/barbican-operator -n barbican-system \
  --for=condition=Ready --timeout=5m

The rendered policy declares policyTypes: [Ingress, Egress], so both directions default-deny and only the rules the chart emits get through: egress to the kube-apiserver, to DNS, to OpenBao on TCP 8200 and to the Barbican API on TCP 9311, plus ingress to the webhook and metrics ports.

Barbican API egress

The barbican-operator probes /healthcheck on the Barbican Service over TCP 9311 to set BarbicanAPIReady. The chart admits it with a rule of its own: TCP 9311 to every pod labelled app.kubernetes.io/name: barbican and app.kubernetes.io/managed-by: barbican-operator, in any namespace. It needs no value, and the CNI judges the probe after the Service DNAT, at the API pod and its port, so the rule selects the API pods by the labels the operator sets on them.

barbican-operator charts before 0.6.0 rendered no rule for the health check, and earlier versions of this guide had you apply a second policy, barbican-operator-api-egress, beside the chart's. The chart covers that traffic now, so delete the hand-written policy once the upgraded chart has rendered its own:

kubectl delete networkpolicy barbican-operator-api-egress -n barbican-system \
  --ignore-not-found

The ingress leg of that same probe needs nothing from you: when the workload namespace runs a per-CR NetworkPolicy, the sub-reconciler appends an operator-namespace ingress peer to every policy it renders.

OpenBao egress

The barbican-operator dials the OpenBao server of every store it reconciles, so the chart carries a rule of its own for it, on by default:

networkPolicy:
  openBao:
    enabled: true

The rule names TCP 8200 and no peer. A brownfield store points at a user-supplied server whose address the chart cannot know, so restricting the destination would mean guessing it. Set openBao.enabled=false when every store in the cluster is reached over a different posture, a non-standard port or an egress proxy already covered by another policy, and add the matching rule yourself. With the policy on and this rule off, the store controller cannot reach any server and every store parks on CredentialsReady=False with reason OpenBaoUnreachable.

The per-CR policy derives its OpenBao egress differently, so do not read one as the model for the other. It emits a single destination-unrestricted egress rule carrying one port entry per distinct port across the store hosts of that Barbican, deduplicated and sorted ascending, and only when at least one credential-ready store yields a usable port. Ten stores on ten hosts that all listen on 8200 therefore produce one rule with one port.

Metrics ingress

Metrics ingress is opt-in and separate. networkPolicy.allowMetricsFrom is empty by default, and with the policy on, an empty list means no ingress rule for the metrics port at all, so a Prometheus that scraped the operator before stops reaching it. Name the scraping namespace when you enable both this policy and the ServiceMonitor from Enable the Barbican Operator Metrics Endpoint:

kubectl patch helmrelease barbican-operator -n barbican-system --type=merge \
  -p '{"spec":{"values":{"networkPolicy":{"allowMetricsFrom":[{"namespaceSelector":{"matchLabels":{"kubernetes.io/metadata.name":"monitoring"}}}]}}}}'

Each entry is rendered verbatim as a NetworkPolicyPeer, so a podSelector narrows it further to the Prometheus pods.

Helm-managed installations (non-Flux)

If you installed the operator directly with Helm (not through Flux), set the values with a rolling helm upgrade. The fail-closed guard still requires kubeApiServer.cidrs and ports:

helm upgrade barbican-operator oci://ghcr.io/c5c3/charts/barbican-operator \
  --namespace barbican-system --reuse-values \
  --set networkPolicy.enabled=true \
  --set 'networkPolicy.kubeApiServer.cidrs[0]=172.18.0.2/32' \
  --set 'networkPolicy.kubeApiServer.ports[0]=6443'

Do not run this on the tutorial devstacks: there the release is Flux-owned, and the helm-controller reverts out-of-band revisions on its next reconcile. Use the HelmRelease patch above instead.

Step 2 — Verify

On the kind devstack this verifies the policy's shape and that the operator still reconciles under the enforced policy. It sends no traffic outside the allow-list (see the prerequisite above).

Restart the operator first. NetworkPolicy enforcement is stateful: a connection opened before the policy existed stays open, so a wrong kubeApiServer rule shows only after the next restart:

kubectl -n barbican-system rollout restart deploy/barbican-operator
kubectl -n barbican-system rollout status deploy/barbican-operator --timeout=5m

A rollout that does not finish within the timeout, with the new pod never Ready, means the egress rule does not admit the API server. See Reconcile timeouts / leader-election churn.

Then check the policy:

kubectl -n barbican-system get networkpolicy
kubectl -n barbican-system describe networkpolicy barbican-operator

Then confirm reconciliation still works end-to-end by driving a change through the ControlPlane CR and watching the projected key manager roll out. The block records the ControlPlane's current count, which is empty while the ControlPlane leaves it at the default, scales the API one replica above the size it runs at, and puts the count back:

if CUR=$(kubectl get controlplane controlplane -n openstack \
     -o jsonpath='{.spec.sizing.barbican.api.replicas}') &&
   RUN=$(kubectl get deploy/controlplane-barbican -n openstack \
     -o jsonpath='{.spec.replicas}'); then
  NEW=$((RUN + 1))

  kubectl patch controlplane controlplane -n openstack --type merge \
    -p "{\"spec\":{\"sizing\":{\"barbican\":{\"api\":{\"replicas\":$NEW}}}}}"
  kubectl wait deploy/controlplane-barbican -n openstack --timeout=5m \
    --for=jsonpath='{.spec.replicas}'="$NEW"
  kubectl rollout status deploy/controlplane-barbican -n openstack --timeout=5m

  # revert to the recorded count; null drops the override again
  kubectl patch controlplane controlplane -n openstack --type merge \
    -p "{\"spec\":{\"sizing\":{\"barbican\":{\"api\":{\"replicas\":${CUR:-null}}}}}}"
else
  echo "could not read the replica counts; nothing was patched" >&2
fi

The if stops the block before the first patch when either read fails. A failed read prints the same empty string as a ControlPlane without an override, so without the guard the revert would drop an override the ControlPlane carries, and a failed Deployment read would set NEW to 1 and shrink the API instead of growing it.

The kubectl wait is the check that proves the operator still reconciles: the patch travels from the ControlPlane to the Barbican CR to the Deployment, and the restarted operator writes nothing until it holds the leader lease. Until the barbican operator writes the new count the Deployment is still fully rolled out at its old size, so a rollout status alone would pass at once. The new count is always one above the running one, so the patch changes the Deployment whatever size the API already runs at.

Set the replica count on the ControlPlane CR, not on the projected controlplane-barbican child: the c5c3-operator re-asserts the child's spec.deployment.replicas on every reconcile, so a direct edit of the child is reverted.

Troubleshooting

Reconcile timeouts / leader-election churn

Symptom: operator logs show Get https://<kube-apiserver>: i/o timeout or leader-election lease renewals fail with context deadline exceeded, and the barbican-operator pod restarts.

Diagnosis: the egress allow-list does not match the API server the operator actually dials. Either kubeApiServer.cidrs is missing one or more of the current endpoint IPs (an HA control plane may have added a replica, or a control-plane node may have been replaced with a different IP), or your CNI maps the API server behind a port that is not in kubeApiServer.ports.

Fix: re-run the discovery command from Step 1 and update networkPolicy.kubeApiServer.cidrs to include every IP it returns, plus every port:

kubectl get endpoints kubernetes -n default -o json \
  | jq -r '.subsets[] | (.addresses[].ip) as $ip | (.ports[].port) as $p | "\($ip)/32 port=\($p)"'

Every secret store reports OpenBaoUnreachable

Symptom: every BarbicanSecretStore in the cluster flips to CredentialsReady=False / OpenBaoUnreachable with context deadline exceeded, including stores that were Ready before the policy went on.

Diagnosis: the store controller's egress to the OpenBao API is blocked. A dropped packet has no refusal to report, so the client waits out its own deadline and reports a timeout rather than a connection error. The usual causes are networkPolicy.openBao.enabled=false with no replacement rule, or a server that listens on a port other than 8200.

Fix: re-enable the chart rule. Its port is fixed at 8200 and the chart offers no override, so a server on another port needs a second NetworkPolicy of your own selecting the operator pod; policies are additive, so its egress rule joins the chart's. Verify from the rendered object rather than from the values:

kubectl -n barbican-system get networkpolicy barbican-operator \
  -o jsonpath='{.spec.egress[*].ports}'

Every Barbican write is rejected

Symptom: kubectl apply on a Barbican or BarbicanSecretStore CR fails with failed calling webhook plus connection refused or no route to host. The ControlPlane stalls too: the c5c3-operator projects controlplane-barbican and controlplane-barbican-store through the same admission path, so its reconcile fails on the same error.

Diagnosis: webhook ingress (9443) is blocked. Both barbican webhooks register failurePolicy=Fail on create and update, so an unreachable operator turns into a cluster-wide rejection of every write to either kind. The usual cause is an API server that calls webhooks from an IP that is not in endpoints/kubernetes, for example because it sits behind a front-end proxy. networkPolicy.webhookClients.cidrs falls back to kubeApiServer.cidrs when empty, which is wrong in that topology.

Fix: discover the actual caller IP (check the API-server audit log or the kube-apiserver Pod's --advertise-address) and set networkPolicy.webhookClients.cidrs explicitly:

kubectl patch helmrelease barbican-operator -n barbican-system --type=merge \
  -p '{"spec":{"values":{"networkPolicy":{"webhookClients":{"cidrs":["10.1.0.0/24"]}}}}}'

If the wedge blocks you from recovering, set networkPolicy.enabled=false with the same patch shape. The policy object is removed on the next reconcile and the operator reverts to unrestricted pod networking without a pod restart.

Tested by

Every operator chart includes the same chart-level NetworkPolicy template from the shared operator-library, whose helm-unittest (operators/shared/helm/operator-library-testbed/tests/networkpolicy_test.yaml) pins the shared rules. The barbican chart's helm-unittest (operators/barbican/helm/barbican-operator/tests/networkpolicy_test.yaml) pins the two egress rules the chart adds, for OpenBao and for its API health check. The keystone chart's policy is exercised end-to-end on the CI e2e kind cluster by the chainsaw suite below.

chainsaw test --test-dir tests/e2e/keystone-operator/network-policy-egress