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OCI KMS seal configuration

Seal wrapping requires Vault Enterprise

All Vault versions support auto-unseal for OCI KMS, but seal wrapping requires Vault Enterprise.

Vault Enterprise enables seal wrapping by default, which means the KMS service must be available at runtime and not just during the unseal process. Refer to the Seal wrap overview for more information.

The OCI KMS seal configures Vault to use OCI KMS as the seal wrapping mechanism. The OCI KMS seal is activated by one of the following:

  • The presence of a seal "ocikms" block in Vault's configuration file
  • The presence of the environment variable VAULT_SEAL_TYPE set to ocikms. If enabling via environment variable, all other required values specific to OCI KMS (i.e. VAULT_OCIKMS_SEAL_KEY_ID, VAULT_OCIKMS_CRYPTO_ENDPOINT VAULT_OCIKMS_MANAGEMENT_ENDPOINT) must be also supplied, as well as all other OCI-related environment variables that lends to successful authentication.

ocikms example

This example shows configuring the OCI KMS seal through the Vault configuration file by providing all the required values:

seal "ocikms" {
    key_id               = "ocid1.key.oc1.iad.afnxza26aag4s.abzwkljsbapzb2nrha5nt3s7s7p42ctcrcj72vn3kq5qx"
    crypto_endpoint      = "https://afnxza26aag4s-crypto.kms.us-ashburn-1.oraclecloud.com"
    management_endpoint  = "https://afnxza26aag4s-management.kms.us-ashburn-1.oraclecloud.com"
    auth_type_api_key    = "true"
}

ocikms parameters

These parameters apply to the seal stanza in the Vault configuration file:

  • key_id (string: <required>): The OCI KMS key ID to use. May also be specified by the VAULT_OCIKMS_SEAL_KEY_ID environment variable.

  • crypto_endpoint (string: <required>): The OCI KMS cryptographic endpoint (or data plane endpoint) to be used to make OCI KMS encryption/decryption requests. May also be specified by the VAULT_OCIKMS_CRYPTO_ENDPOINT environment variable.

  • management_endpoint (string: <required>): The OCI KMS management endpoint (or control plane endpoint) to be used to make OCI KMS key management requests. May also be specified by the VAULT_OCIKMS_MANAGEMENT_ENDPOINT environment variable.

  • auth_type_api_key (boolean: false): Specifies if using API key to authenticate to OCI KMS service. If it is false, Vault authenticates using the instance principal from the compute instance. See Authentication section for details. Default is false.

  • disabled (string: ""): Set this to true if Vault is migrating from an auto seal configuration. Otherwise, set to false.

Refer to the Seal Migration documentation for more information about the seal migration process.

Authentication

Authentication-related values must be provided, either as environment variables or as configuration parameters.

If you want to use Instance Principal, add section configuration below and add further configuration settings as detailed in the configuration docs.

seal "ocikms" {
    crypto_endpoint     = "<kms-crypto-endpoint>"
    management_endpoint = "<kms-management-endpoint>"
    key_id              = "<kms-key-id>"
}
# Notes:
# crypto_endpoint can be replaced by VAULT_OCIKMS_CRYPTO_ENDPOINT environment var
# management_endpoint can be replaced by VAULT_OCIKMS_MANAGEMENT_ENDPOINT environment var
# key_id can be replaced by VAULT_OCIKMS_SEAL_KEY_ID environment var

If you want to use User Principal, the plugin will take the API key you defined for OCI SDK, often under ~/.oci/config.

seal "ocikms" {
    auth_type_api_key   = true
    crypto_endpoint     = "<kms-crypto-endpoint>"
    management_endpoint = "<kms-management-endpoint>"
    key_id              = "<kms-key-id>"
}

To grant permission for a compute instance to use OCI KMS service, write policies for KMS access.

  • Create a Dynamic Group in your OCI tenancy.
  • Create a policy that allows the Dynamic Group to use or manage keys from OCI KMS. There are multiple ways to write these policies. The OCI Identity Policy can be used as a reference or starting point.

The most common policy allows a dynamic group of tenant A to use KMS's keys in tenant B:

define tenancy tenantB as <tenantB-ocid>

endorse dynamic-group <dynamic-group-name> to use keys in tenancy tenantB


define tenancy tenantA as <tenantA-ocid>

define dynamic-group <dynamic-group-name> as <dynamic-group-ocid>

admit dynamic-group <dynamic-group-name> of tenancy tenantA to use keys in compartment <key-compartment>

ocikms rotate OCI KMS master key

For the OCI KMS key rotation feature, OCI KMS will create a new version of key internally. This process is independent from Vault, and Vault still uses the same key_id without any interruption.

If you want to change the key_id: migrate to Shamir, change key_id, and then migrate to OCI KMS with the new key_id.

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