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Kubernetes cert-manager Certificate Renewal Failure and Expiration Sentinel

Audits cert-manager for failed TLS/SSL certificate issuance and renewal cycles to prevent production HTTPS outages.

Categories
CloudInfrastructure

How it works

This workflow scrapes the controller metrics endpoint of Kubernetes cert-manager (default port 9402) to inspect certmanager_certificate_ready_status. When Let's Encrypt ACME challenges fail due to DNS propagation delays, ingress routing misconfigurations, or Let's Encrypt rate limits, the certificate condition is marked False. If unresolved before existing TLS secrets expire, web applications and APIs throw fatal SSL certificate expired browser warnings. This blueprint flags unready certificates and alerts security teams ahead of expiration.

What you get

  • Real-time visibility into failing Kubernetes TLS certificate renewals.
  • Prevents catastrophic HTTPS outages and browser security warnings.
  • Automated detection across all cluster namespaces.

Who it's for

  • Kubernetes Platform Engineers and DevSecOps practitioners.
  • Site Reliability Engineers responsible for web and API certificate lifecycles.

Why orchestrate this with Kestra

  • Continuous Security Assurance: Runs hourly audits across multi-tenant clusters.
  • Decoupled Incident Escalation: Dispatches alerts directly to security Slack channels.
  • Zero Infrastructure Overhead: Standard HTTP metric scraping with no custom binaries.

Prerequisites

  • cert-manager installed with metrics port exposed (--metrics-listen-address=0.0.0.0:9402).
  • Secret SLACK_WEBHOOK configured in Kestra.

Quick start

  1. Import the blueprint.
  2. Input the cert-manager metrics endpoint.
  3. Run the workflow to inspect current certificate statuses.

How to extend

  • Query certmanager_certificate_expiration_timestamp_seconds to calculate days remaining until expiration.
  • Re-trigger certificate issuance automatically via cmctl renew.

Links

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