In today’s security-conscious IT environments, sensitive data like passwords, API keys, and certificates must be handled with care. Ansible offers a solution through Ansible Vault – a feature that allows you to encrypt sensitive information. However, as environments become more complex, managing a single vault can quickly become cumbersome. This is where Ansible Vault IDs come into play, enabling you to manage different tiers of secrets with ease.

What is Ansible Vault?

Ansible Vault is a feature that allows you to encrypt and decrypt sensitive data within your playbooks, roles, and other Ansible files. This ensures that sensitive information is not exposed in plain text within your code repositories or when deploying configurations. Traditionally, a single vault was used to manage all encrypted data, but this can lead to challenges when different teams or environments require different levels of access.

Introduction to Ansible Vault IDs

Vault IDs are a feature introduced in Ansible to manage multiple vault passwords within the same project. This is particularly useful when you need to segregate secrets for different environments (e.g., development, staging, production) or for different tiers of access within the same environment.

Each Vault ID is associated with a specific password file that can be used to encrypt or decrypt the data. By using multiple Vault IDs, you can control access more granularly and ensure that only the appropriate users or systems have access to the necessary secrets.

Setting Up Multiple Vault IDs

To use Vault IDs, you first need to create password files. These files should be securely stored and only accessible to authorized users. For this example, let’s assume we have three environments: development, staging, and production.

1. Create password files First, create separate password files for each environment:

   echo "dev_password" > ~/.vault_dev
   echo "staging_password" > ~/.vault_staging
   echo "prod_password" > ~/.vault_prod

Ensure these files are readable only by the owner:

   chmod 600 ~/.vault_*

2. Encrypting data with Vault IDs Let’s say you want to store database credentials for each environment. You can create separate encrypted files using the respective Vault IDs. For development:

   ansible-vault encrypt_string --vault-id dev@~/.vault_dev 'dev_db_password' --name 'db_password'

For staging:

   ansible-vault encrypt_string --vault-id staging@~/.vault_staging 'staging_db_password' --name 'db_password'

For production:

   ansible-vault encrypt_string --vault-id prod@~/.vault_prod 'prod_db_password' --name 'db_password'

These commands will generate encrypted strings that you can store in your playbooks or variable files.

3. Using encrypted data in playbooks In your playbooks, you can reference these encrypted variables as you normally would. Ansible will automatically use the correct Vault ID to decrypt the data. Here’s an example of a playbook that uses these variables:

   - hosts: all
     vars_files:
       - dev_vars.yml
       - staging_vars.yml
       - prod_vars.yml

     tasks:
       - name: Print DB password
         debug:
           msg: "DB password is {{ db_password }}"

Depending on the environment, Ansible will decrypt the corresponding db_password using the appropriate Vault ID.

4. Running the playbook with multiple Vault IDs When running your playbook, specify the Vault IDs and their corresponding password files:

   ansible-playbook playbook.yml --vault-id dev@~/.vault_dev --vault-id staging@~/.vault_staging --vault-id prod@~/.vault_prod

Ansible will use the correct Vault ID to decrypt the relevant variables based on the environment.

Example Scenario: Storing Different Tiers of Passwords

Imagine you’re working on a project with three tiers of access:

1. Development: Developers need access to non-critical infrastructure passwords.
2. Staging: The QA team requires access to intermediate-level infrastructure.
3. Production: Only senior engineers have access to highly sensitive production credentials.

Using Vault IDs, you can ensure that each group only has access to the passwords they need.

• Development environment:

  db_password: !vault |
          $ANSIBLE_VAULT;1.1;AES256
          31656538623964306466636338636538373531313333353731393563346661336561633232616338
          ...

• Staging environment:

  db_password: !vault |
          $ANSIBLE_VAULT;1.1;AES256
          61343531346631383566396235626465313130333765323738376535313334393337643833653738
          ...

• Production environment:

  db_password: !vault |
          $ANSIBLE_VAULT;1.1;AES256
          34336565653365383364336237613961323237643565373834356465373964386162653933623865
          ...

This segregation ensures that even if the development or staging passwords are compromised, the production environment remains secure.

Best Practices

1. Separate Vault passwords: Store vault passwords in secure locations and ensure that only authorized personnel have access.
2. Use Vault IDs wisely: Organize your vaults logically, matching your organization’s security policies and team structures.
3. Automate password rotation: Regularly rotate vault passwords to reduce the risk of unauthorized access.

Conclusion

Ansible Vault with multiple Vault IDs offers a flexible, secure way to manage sensitive information in complex IT environments. By segregating secrets according to environment or tier, you can enhance security while maintaining the ease of automation that Ansible provides. Implementing this in your projects ensures that your sensitive data is always protected, regardless of where or how it’s used.

With these techniques, IT engineers can confidently manage and secure their infrastructure, knowing that their secrets are safe.