Skip to content
New issue

Have a question about this project? Sign up for a free GitHub account to open an issue and contact its maintainers and the community.

By clicking “Sign up for GitHub”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy statement. We’ll occasionally send you account related emails.

Already on GitHub? Sign in to your account

Fix: clarify managed v. deployed certs #291

Open
wants to merge 4 commits into
base: main
Choose a base branch
from

Conversation

mjang
Copy link
Contributor

@mjang mjang commented Mar 17, 2025

Proposed changes

Closes #256

Checklist

Before merging a pull request, run through this checklist and mark each as complete.

  • I have read the contributing guidelines
  • I have signed the F5 Contributor License Agreement (CLA)
  • I have rebased my branch onto main
  • I have ensured my PR is targeting the main branch and pulling from my branch from my own fork
  • I have ensured that the commit messages adhere to Conventional Commits
  • I have ensured that documentation content adheres to the style guide
  • If the change involves potentially sensitive changes1, I have assessed the possible impact
  • If applicable, I have added tests that prove my fix is effective or that my feature works
  • I have ensured that existing tests pass after adding my changes
  • If applicable, I have updated README.md and CHANGELOG.md

Footnotes

  1. Potentially sensitive changes include anything involving code, personally identify information (PII), live URLs or significant amounts of new or revised documentation. Please refer to our style guide for guidance about placeholder content.

@mjang mjang self-assigned this Mar 17, 2025
@github-actions github-actions bot added documentation Improvements or additions to documentation product/nginx-one NGINX One Console labels Mar 17, 2025
@mjang mjang added the enhancement New feature or request label Mar 17, 2025
Copy link

Deploy Preview will be available once build job completes!

Name Link
😎 Deploy Preview https://frontdoor-test-docs.nginx.com/previews/docs/291/

@mjang mjang force-pushed the fix-deployed-managed-cert-sections branch from 7fc0462 to e0a508f Compare March 17, 2025 20:33
@mjang mjang requested a review from sylwang March 21, 2025 15:27
@mjang mjang marked this pull request as ready for review March 21, 2025 15:27
@mjang mjang requested a review from a team as a code owner March 21, 2025 15:27
@mjang
Copy link
Contributor Author

mjang commented Mar 21, 2025

@sylwang I hope this is more clear! (based on #256 )


You can remove a deployed certificate from an independent instance or from a Config Sync Group. This will remove the certificate's association with the instance or group, but it does not delete the certificate files from the instance(s).
You can remove a managed certificate from an independent instance or from a Config Sync Group. This will remove the certificate's association with the Instance or group, but it does not delete the certificate files from the Instance(s).
Copy link
Contributor

Choose a reason for hiding this comment

The reason will be displayed to describe this comment to others. Learn more.

Removing a managed certificate from an instance or CSG will also remove the certificate files (and key files, for a cert-key pair) from the data plane instances.


Every instance with a deployed certificate includes paths to certificates in their configuration files. If you remove the deployed file path to one certificate, that change is limited to that one instance.
Every Instance with a certificate includes paths to certificates in their configuration files. If you remove one certificate, that change is limited to that one Instance.
Copy link
Contributor

Choose a reason for hiding this comment

The reason will be displayed to describe this comment to others. Learn more.

This is not true. Deploying a managed certificate under specified file paths down to a data plane is one action users could do. Referencing and using those deployed file paths in the NGINX configuration files is a separate action.

It is possible that users choose to deploy a managed certificate under specified file paths from the console, but they decided not to use them in the NGINX configuration files. They could also choose to reference those certificates in the NGINX configuration files later.

Copy link
Contributor

Choose a reason for hiding this comment

The reason will be displayed to describe this comment to others. Learn more.

If you remove one certificate, that change is limited to that one Instance.

Suggest adding more contexts here, or leave out this sentence. I'm not sure it would be necessary to mention this. From my perspective, users could have interpreted this message differently - for example, for a certificate that was deployed to multiple instances, any change to that certificate object itself would impact all the instances where it was deployed to.

My understanding is that this message tries to clarify what would happen if users make changes to cert references used in NGINX configuration files. In general, the common sense is that any change to NGINX configuration files for a specific NGINX instance would only affect that instance, so this would be another reason that this message is trivial and could lead to additional confusion.


Every Config Sync Group also includes paths to certificates in its configuration files. If you remove the deployed path to one certificate, that change affects all instances which belong to that Config Sync Group.
Every Config Sync Group also includes paths toi _managed_ certificates in its configuration files. If you remove a managed certificate to a Config Sync Group, that change affects all Instances which belong to that Config Sync Group.
Copy link
Contributor

Choose a reason for hiding this comment

The reason will be displayed to describe this comment to others. Learn more.

Suggested change
Every Config Sync Group also includes paths toi _managed_ certificates in its configuration files. If you remove a managed certificate to a Config Sync Group, that change affects all Instances which belong to that Config Sync Group.
Every Config Sync Group also includes paths to managed certificates in its configuration files. If you remove a managed certificate to a Config Sync Group, that change affects all Instances which belong to that Config Sync Group.

@@ -155,22 +161,24 @@ You can modify existing certificates from the **Certificates** screen. Select th

If that certificate is already managed as part of a Config Sync Group, the changes you make affect all instances in that group.

## Remove a deployed certificate
## Remove a managed certificate
Copy link
Contributor

Choose a reason for hiding this comment

The reason will be displayed to describe this comment to others. Learn more.

To clearly distinguish from the section "Delete a managed certificate" below, I'd recommend keeping the terminology "deployed" in the title.

Suggested change
## Remove a managed certificate
## Delete a deployed certificate

From the config editor in the UI, users have an option "delete" to delete a deployed certificate from an instance or CSG. In the UI, we also use the term "cert deployment" in a few places. It would be good to stay consistent : )


You can remove a deployed certificate from an independent instance or from a Config Sync Group. This will remove the certificate's association with the instance or group, but it does not delete the certificate files from the instance(s).
You can remove a managed certificate from an independent instance or from a Config Sync Group. This will remove the certificate's association with the Instance or group, but it does not delete the certificate files from the Instance(s).
Copy link
Contributor

Choose a reason for hiding this comment

The reason will be displayed to describe this comment to others. Learn more.

Suggested change
You can remove a managed certificate from an independent instance or from a Config Sync Group. This will remove the certificate's association with the Instance or group, but it does not delete the certificate files from the Instance(s).
From the configuration editor where you normally modify NGINX configuration files of an independent instance or Config Sync Group, you can click on the "delete" icon of a managed certificate object that was previously deployed to the instance or Config Sync Group. You should be able to see the file paths where it was deployed to. Deleting the managed certificate from the NGINX configuration editor will remove the certificate files from those file paths. If the certificate object is a certificate-key pair, and the private key was deployed, you could optionally choose to delete the deployed key from the independent instance or Config Sync Group, by clicking on the "delete" icon next to the private key file.

Here is a rough summary of what users could do. Feel free to change the wording and improve this paragraph further! : )


Every instance with a deployed certificate includes paths to certificates in their configuration files. If you remove the deployed file path to one certificate, that change is limited to that one instance.
Every Instance with a certificate includes paths to certificates in their configuration files. If you remove one certificate, that change is limited to that one Instance.
Copy link
Contributor

Choose a reason for hiding this comment

The reason will be displayed to describe this comment to others. Learn more.

Suggested change
Every Instance with a certificate includes paths to certificates in their configuration files. If you remove one certificate, that change is limited to that one Instance.
For a managed certificate that was deployed from the console to your data plane instance, you might have chosen to reference the certificate in the NGINX configuration file, using the file paths specified in the certificate deployment. You can choose to remove those certificate references from the NGINX configuration file through the console. This will not affect the deployed certificate on your data plane instance. The certificate and private key files if deployed, will remain on the data plane instance.
If you would like to delete those certificate and private key files from your data plane, follow the instructions above and click on the "delete" icon next to those files in the NGINX configuration editor.

Co-authored-by: Sylvia Wang <139922338+sylwang@users.noreply.github.com>
Sign up for free to join this conversation on GitHub. Already have an account? Sign in to comment
Labels
documentation Improvements or additions to documentation enhancement New feature or request product/nginx-one NGINX One Console
Projects
None yet
Development

Successfully merging this pull request may close these issues.

N1C: Possible section rename
4 participants