AWS Elastic Container Service with KSM (Advanced)
Running Keeper Automator with the AWS ECS (Fargate) service and Keeper Secrets Manager for secret storage
Last updated
Running Keeper Automator with the AWS ECS (Fargate) service and Keeper Secrets Manager for secret storage
Last updated
This example demonstrates how to launch the Keeper Automator service in Amazon ECS with Fargate, while also demonstrating the use of Keeper Secrets Manager for retrieving the secret configuration for the published Docker container.
Since this deployment requires the use of Keeper Secrets Manager, this section reviews the steps needed to set up your Keeper vault and the SSL certificate for publishing the Automator service.
Create an SSL Certificate as described from this page
When this step is completed, you will have two files: ssl-certificate.pfx and ssl-certificate-password.txt
Create a Shared Folder in your vault. This folder will not be shared to anyone except the secrets manager application.
Create a record in the Shared Folder, and make note of the Record UID. Upload the SSL certificate and SSL certificate password files to a Keeper record in the shared folder.
Upload a new file called keeper.properties which contains the following content:
The notable line here is the disable_sni_check=true which is necessary when running the Automator service under a managed load balancer.
Your shared folder and record should look something like this:
Create a Keeper Secrets Manager ("KSM") application in your vault. If you are not familiar with secrets manager, follow this guide. The name of this application is "Automator" but the name does not matter.
Edit the Shared Folder and add the Automator application to this folder.
Open the secrets manager application, click on "Devices" tab and click "Add Device". Select a base64 configuration. Download and save this configuration for use in the ECS task definition.
If your VPC does not exist, a basic VPC with multiple subnets, a route table and internet gateway must be set up. In this example, there are 3 subnets in the VPC with an internet gateway as seen in the resource map below:
Go to CloudWatch > Create log group
Name the log group "automator-logs".
Go to IAM > Create role
Select AWS service
Then search for Elastic Container Service and select it.
Select "Elastic Container Service Task" and click Next
Add the "AmazonECSTaskExecution" policy to the role and click Next
Assign the name "ECSTaskWritetoLogs" and then create the role.
Make note of the ARN for this Role, as it will be used in the next steps.
In this example, it is arn:aws:iam::373699066757:role/ECSTaskWritetoLogs
Go to EC2 > Security Groups and click on "Create security group"
Depending on what region your Keeper tenant is hosted, you need to create inbound rules that allow https port 443. The list of IPs for each tenant location is on this page. In the example below, this is the US data center.
We also recommend adding your workstation's external IP address for testing and troubleshooting.
Assign a name like "MyAutomatorService" and then click "Create".
After saving the security group, edit the inbound rules again. This time, add HTTPS port 443 and select the security group in the drop-down. This will allow the load balancer to monitor health status and distribute traffic.
We'll create another security group that controls NFS access to EFS from the cluster.
Go to EC2 > Security Groups and click on "Create security group"
Set a name such as "MyAutomatorEFS".
Select Type of "NFS" and then select Custom and then the security group that was created in the prior step for the ECS cluster. Click "Create security group".
Note the security group ID for the next step. In this case, it is sgr-089fea5e4738f3898
At present, the Automator service needs access to two different folders. In this example setup, we are creating one volume to store the SSL certificate and SSL passphrase files. The second volume stores the property file for the Automator service. These 3 files are in your Keeper record.
Go to AWS > Elastic File System and click Create file system
Call it "automator_config" and click Create
Again, go to Elastic File System and click Create file system. Call this one automator_settings and click Create.
Note the File system IDs displayed. These IDs (e.g. fs-xxx) will be used in the ECS task definition.
After a minute, the 2 filesystems will be available. Click on each one and then select the "Network" tab then click on "Manage".
Change the security group for each subnet to the one created in the above step (e.g. "MyAutomatorEFS") and click Save. Make this network change to both filesystems that were created.
Navigate to the Amazon Elastic Container Service.
Select "Create cluster" and assign the cluster name and VPC. In this example we are using the default "AWS Fargate (serverless)" infrastructure option.
The Default namespace can be called "automator"
The "Infrastructure" is set to AWS Fargate (serverless)
Click Create
In your favorite text editor, copy the below JSON task definition file and save it.
Make the following changes to the JSON file:
Change the XXXCONFIGXXX value to a base64 config from Keeper Secrets Manager created in the beginning of this guide
Change the 3 instances of "XXXXX" to the Record UID containing the SSL certificate, SSL certificate password and settings file in your vault shared folder which KSM is accessing.
Change the two File system IDs (fs-XXX) to yours from the above steps
Change the XXX for the role ID as specific to your AWS role
Change the eu-west-1 value in two spots to the region of your ECS service
Next, go to Elastic Container Service > Task definitions > Create Task from JSON
Remove the existing JSON and copy-paste the contents of the JSON file above into the box, then click Create.
This task definition can be modified according to your instance CPU/Memory requirements.
In order for an application load balancer in AWS to serve requests for Automator, the SSL certificate must be managed by the AWS Certificate Manager.
Go to AWS Certificate Manager and Click on Import
On your workstation, we need to convert the SSL certificate (.pfx) file to a PEM-encoded certificate body, PEM-encoded private key and PEM-encoded certificate chain.
Since you already have the .pfx file, this can be done using the below openssl commands:
Download the ssl-certificate.pfx file and the certificate password locally to your workstation and enter the below commands:
Generate the PEM-encoded certificate body
Generate the PEM-encoded private key
Generate the PEM-encoded certificate chain
Copy the contents of the 3 files into the screen, e.g.
Go to EC2 > Target Groups and click Create target group
Select "IP Addresses" as the target type
Enter the Target group name of "automatortargetgroup" or whatever you prefer
Select HTTPS Protocol with Port 443
Select the VPC which contains the ECS cluster
Select HTTP1
Under Health checks, select the Health check protocol "HTTPS"
Type /health as the Health check path
Click Next
Don't select any targets yet, just click Create target group
Go to EC2 > Load balancers > Create load balancer
Select Application Load Balancer > Create
Assign name such as "automatornalb" or whatever you prefer
Scheme is "Internet-facing"
IP address type: IPv4
In the Network Mapping section, select the VPC and the subnets which will host the ECS service.
In the Security groups, select "MyAutomatorService" as created in Step 4.
In the Listeners and routing section, select HTTPS port 443 and in the target group select the Target group as created in the prior step (automatortargetgroup).
In the Secure listener settings, select the SSL certificate "from ACM" that was uploaded to the AWS Certificate Manager in Step 9.
Click Create load balancer
Go to Elastic Container Service > Task definitions > Select the task created in Step 8.
From this Task definition, click on Deploy > Create Service
Select Existing cluster of "automator"
Assign Service name of "automatorservice" or whatever name you prefer
Important: For the number of Desired tasks, set this to 1 for right now. After configuration, we will increase to the number of tasks you would like to have running.
Under Networking, select the VPC, subnets and replace the existing security group with the ECS security group created in Step 4. In this case, it is called "MyAutomatorService".
For Public IP, turn this ON.
Under Load balancing, select Load balancer type "Application Load Balancer"
Use an existing load balancer and select "automatoralb" created in Step 11.
Use an existing listener, and select the 443:HTTPS listener
Use an existing target group, and select the Target Group from Step 10
Click Create
After a few minutes, the service should start up.
Assuming that the DNS name is hosted and managed by Route53:
Go to Route53 > Create or Edit record
Create an A-record
Set as "Alias"
Route traffic to "Alias to Application and Classic Load Balancer"
Select AWS Region
Select the "automatoralb" Application Load Balancer
Select "Simple Routing"
Select "Save"
The next step is to configure Automator using Keeper Commander while only having one task running.
At this point, the service is running but it is not able to communicate with Keeper yet.
On your workstation, server or any computer, install the Keeper Commander CLI. This is just used for initial setup. The installation instructions including binary installers are here:
Installing Keeper Commander
After Commander is installed, you can type keeper shell to open the session, then login using the login command. In order to set up Automator, you must login as a Keeper Administrator, or an Admin with the ability to manage the SSO node.
Login to Keeper Commander and activate the Automator using a series of commands, starting with automator create
The Node Name (in this case "Azure Cloud") comes from the Admin Console UI as seen below.
The output of the command will display the Automator settings, including metadata from the identity provider.
Run the "automator edit" command as displayed below, which sets the URL and also sets up the skills (team, team_for_user and device).
Next we exchange keys: The enterprise private key encrypted with the Automator public key is provided to Automator:
Initialize the Automator with the new configuration
Enable the service
At this point, the configuration is complete.
For automated health checks, you can use the below URL:
https://<server>/health
Example curl command:
In this example setup, the load balancer will be sending health checks to the target instances.
Now that Keeper Automator is deployed with a single task running, you can test the end-user experience. No prompts for approval will be required after the user authenticates with the SSO identity provider.
The easiest way to test is to open an incognito mode window to the Keeper Web Vault and login with SSO Cloud. You will not be prompted for device approval.
Assuming that the approval worked, you can now increase the number of tasks running.
From the ECS screen, open the automator service and click "Update Service". Then set the number of tasks that you would like to have running.
The Automator logs can be searched and monitored in the "Logs" tab of the ECS service, or in CloudWatch.