Learn OpenShift

Secrets

Secrets are similar to config maps, which we discussed in the previous chapter, in that they are also used to pass data to pods, but that's where their similarities end. A secret's only use case is to store sensitive data consumed by applications—API tokens, credentials, X.509 certificates/keys, and so on. They are backed by tmpfs (an in-memory temporary filesystem) which prevents them from being stored on persistent storage. Secrets are different from config maps in the following ways:

• Many secrets are created automatically on OpenShift startup (so that pods are able to access the OpenShift API and internal registry, for example)
• Secret values are base64-encoded by default, which makes them impossible to see until they are injected ...