Protecting Sensitive Data in Kubernetes: ConfigMaps & Secrets Explained

Configuration management in Kubernetes (K8s) is the process of defining and managing the configuration of your applications running in a K8s cluster.

K8s provides several mechanisms for managing configuration, including ConfigMaps and Secrets, and supports several ways to inject configuration into your application’s containers.

ConfigMap

Configuration management is tightly integrated with other Kubernetes features and is critical for building scalable and reliable applications in Kubernetes.

Kubernetes configurations are typically defined in YAML files (Ain’t Markup Language) that define the desired state of a Kubernetes deployment.

Kubernetes YAML Structure

apiVersion→ Specifies the Kubernetes API version to use.

kind→ The type of Kubernetes resource (e.g., pod, deployment, service).

metadata→ Information about the resource (name, labels, annotations).

spec→ The desired state of the resource (containers, replicas, ports, etc.).

apiVersion: v1
kind: Pod
metadata:
  name: my-pod # Unique name of the Pod.
  namespace: default # Specifies which namespace the Pod belongs
  labels: # Key-value pairs used for grouping and selecting…