Kafkauser Secret Certificate validity and all

[stuartm21]

Hi Team,

I have created a Kafkauser in my k8s cluster and now I am having some doubts. When the kafka user is created, the user credentials are created in a Secret. Inside that secret we can see the following datas as well:

Data
====
user.p12:       2722 bytes
user.password:  12 bytes
ca.crt:         1854 bytes
user.crt:       1468 bytes
user.key:       1708 bytes

Our application needs to use the user and its credentials for authentication and to produce or consume messages. So my questions are

1. How the kafkauser certificats are renewing here?
2. Will strimzi/your apps notify us once you renewed the certificates?

[scholzj]

Re 1) Strimzi will automatically renew the certificates before their expiration. The new certificate will be in the updated secret.
Re 2) No, currently there is no special notification.

[scholzj]

But the issue is not just the short lifetime. The issue is that you basically issue certificates which are already up for renewal. That does not make any sense.

[stuartm21]

@scholzj I am sorry I didn't get you. Can you please explain bit more? I am using in prod account, 3year for client cert and 5year for cluster cert. We want to renew the cluster cert and kafka user cert. How can we do this.?

[scholzj]

I'm sorry, but this is super confusing. You talk about one environment with one set of settings, than you talk about another environment with other settings. Pick one and stick with it.

Why do you want to renew the cluster cert and kafka user cert? I do not understand what are you asking for -> these two have nothing to do with each other.

[stuartm21]

@scholzj Ignore all let's start fresh here. I created a Kafka cluster and added the parameters for renewalDays, 3year for client cert, and 5year for cluster cert. So consider this is my situation.
Is there any way to renew kafka-user certs?

[scholzj]

The KafkaUser certs either renew automatically or you can just delete the secret and a new one with new certificate will be issued.