K8s resource: Secret

What is the Secret resource?

Secret in Kubernetes is a configuration resource that stores sensitive data like passwords or API keys as base64 encoded strings.

Example Secret YAML

apiVersion: v1
kind: Secret
metadata:
  name: my-secret
type: Opaque
data:
  DB_USERNAME: bXl1c2Vy
  DB_PASSWORD: c2VjdXJlcGFzc3dvcmQ=

Note that the values of the keys under data must be base64-encoded (e.g., "myuser" → bXl1c2Vy and "securepassword" → c2VjdXJlcGFzc3dvcmQ=).

How to use the secret in a Pod

env:
  - name: DB_USERNAME
    valueFrom:
      secretKeyRef:
        name: my-secret
        key: DB_USERNAME
  - name: DB_PASSWORD
    valueFrom:
      secretKeyRef:
        name: my-secret
        key: DB_PASSWORD