DNS01

Configuring DNS01 Challenge Provider

This page contains details on the different options available on the Issuer resource’s DNS01 challenge solver configuration.

For more information on configuring ACME Issuers and their API format, read the ACME Issuers documentation.

DNS01 provider configuration must be specified on the Issuer resource, similar to the examples in the setting up documentation.

You can read about how the DNS01 challenge type works on the Let’s Encrypt challenge types page.

apiVersion: cert-manager.io/v1alpha2
kind: Issuer
metadata:
  name: example-issuer
spec:
  acme:
    email: user@example.com
    server: https://acme-staging-v02.api.letsencrypt.org/directory
    privateKeySecretRef:
      name: example-issuer-account-key
    solvers:
    - dns01:
        clouddns:
          project: my-project
          serviceAccountSecretRef:
            name: prod-clouddns-svc-acct-secret
            key: service-account.json

Each issuer can specify multiple different DNS01 challenge providers, and it is also possible to have multiple instances of the same DNS provider on a single Issuer (e.g. two CloudDNS accounts could be set, each with their own name).

For more information on utilizing multiple solver types on a single Issuer, read the multiple-solver-types section.

Setting Nameservers for DNS01 Self Check

cert-manager will check the correct DNS records exist before attempting a DNS01 challenge. By default, the DNS servers for this check will be taken from /etc/resolv.conf. If this is not desired (for example with multiple authoritative nameservers or split-horizon DNS), the cert-manager controller exposes a flag that allows you alter this behavior:

Example usage::

--dns01-recursive-nameservers "8.8.8.8:53,1.1.1.1:53"

If you’re using the cert-manager helm chart, you can set recursive nameservers through .Values.extraArgs or at the command at helm install/upgrade time with --set:

--set 'extraArgs={--dns01-recursive-nameservers=8.8.8.8:53\,1.1.1.1:53}'

Delegated Domains for DNS01

By default, cert-manager will not follow CNAME records pointing to subdomains.

If granting cert-manager access to the root DNS zone is not desired, then the _acme-challenge.example.com subdomain can instead be delegated to some other, less privileged domain. Once a CNAME record has been configured to point at the desired domain, and the DNS configuration/credentials for the zone that should be updated have been provided, all that is left to be done is adding an additional field into the relevant dns01 solver:

apiVersion: cert-manager.io/v1alpha2
kind: Issuer
metadata:
  ...
spec:
  acme:
    ...
    solvers:
    - dns01:
        # Valid values are None and Follow
        cnameStrategy: Follow
        clouddns:
          ...

cert-manager will then follow CNAME records recursively in order to determine which DNS zone to update during DNS01 challenges.

Supported DNS01 providers

A number of different DNS providers are supported for the ACME Issuer. Below is a listing of available providers, their .yaml configurations, along with additional Kubernetes and provider specific notes regarding their usage.

Webhook

cert-manager also supports out of tree DNS providers using an external webhook. Links to these supported providers along with their documentation are below:

You can find more information on how to configure webhook providers here.

To create a new unsupported DNS provider, follow the development documentation here.

ACMEDNS

Akamai

AzureDNS

CloudFlare

DigitalOcean

Google CloudDNS

RFC-2136

Route53

Webhook

Last modified January 1, 0001