AccuKnox Secrets Manager - Deployment Guide¶

AccuKnox Secrets Manager is a secure secrets management solution that stores encrypted secrets, issues short-lived dynamic secrets, and gives identity-based access control with full audit logs. It is a drop-in replacement for HashiCorp Vault. This guide covers installing it on Kubernetes using the Helm chart provided in accuknoxsecretmanager.tar.

Prerequisites¶

System Requirements¶

1 vCPU and 512Mi memory minimum (single node)
10Gi of persistent storage

Kubernetes Requirements¶

Kubernetes 1.30 or later, with a default StorageClass
Helm 3
kubectl configured to talk to your cluster

Check these before you start:

kubectl version
kubectl get storageclass
helm version

Architecture Diagram¶

AccuKnox Secrets Manager architecture

Installing through Helm Chart¶

1. Extract the chart¶

tar xf accuknoxsecretmanager.tar
cd accuknoxsecretmanager

2. Install with Helm¶

helm upgrade --install vault .

This installs the Secrets Manager server and the Agent Injector into the default namespace, using the settings in values.yaml.

To install into your own namespace:

kubectl create namespace accuknox
helm upgrade --install vault . -n accuknox

3. Initialize and unseal¶

The server starts sealed and uninitialized. Initialize it once:

kubectl exec vault-accuknoxsecretmanager-0 -- vault operator init

This prints 5 unseal keys and a root token. Save these in a safe place; they are shown only once.

Unseal the server using any 3 of the 5 keys:

kubectl exec vault-accuknoxsecretmanager-0 -- vault operator unseal <unseal_key_1>
kubectl exec vault-accuknoxsecretmanager-0 -- vault operator unseal <unseal_key_2>
kubectl exec vault-accuknoxsecretmanager-0 -- vault operator unseal <unseal_key_3>

The pod becomes 1/1 Ready after the third key is entered.

If the pod restarts, it will be sealed again and needs to be unsealed with 3 of your saved keys.

Other Installation Options in the Chart¶

The chart includes a few alternate setups, controlled through values files and flags. Use the one that matches your environment.

OpenShift: ships with a separate values.openshift.yaml (security context constraints, routes, etc.):

helm upgrade --install vault . -f values.openshift.yaml

CSI Provider mode: mounts secrets into pods as volumes using the Secrets Store CSI Driver (install it separately first):

helm upgrade --install vault . --set csi.enabled=true

Custom configuration: override any setting in values.yaml with --set or your own values file:

helm upgrade --install vault . -f my-values.yaml

Verifying the Installation¶

kubectl get pods
kubectl exec vault-accuknoxsecretmanager-0 -- vault status
kubectl get pvc

SCHEDULE DEMO