Charmed MySQL Tutorial > 6. Enable TLS encryption

Enable encryption with TLS

Transport Layer Security (TLS) is a protocol used to encrypt data exchanged between two applications. Essentially, it secures data transmitted over a network.

Typically, enabling TLS internally within a highly available database or between a highly available database and client/server applications requires a high level of expertise. This has all been encoded into Charmed MySQL so that configuring TLS requires minimal effort on your end.

TLS is enabled by integrating Charmed MySQL with the Self Signed Certificates Charm. This charm centralises TLS certificate management consistently and handles operations like providing, requesting, and renewing TLS certificates.

In this section, you will learn how to enable security in your MySQL deployment using TLS encryption.

Summary

• Enable TLS
  • Deploy TLS charm
  • Integrate with MySQL
    • Check the TLS certificate in use
• Disable TLS

Enable TLS

To enable TLS on Charmed MySQL, we must deploy the self-signed-certificates charm and integrate it with MySQL.

Deploy TLS charm

Deploy the self-signed-certificates TLS charm with the following command:

juju deploy self-signed-certificates --config ca-common-name="Tutorial CA"

Wait until self-signed-certificates is up and active, using juju status --watch 1s to monitor its progress:

Model     Controller  Cloud/Region         Version  SLA          Timestamp
tutorial  overlord    localhost/localhost  3.5.2    unsupported  00:40:42+01:00

App                        Version          Status  Scale  Charm                      Channel     Rev  Exposed  Message
mysql                      8.0.32-0ubun...  active      2  mysql                      8.0/stable  147  no
self-signed-certificates                    active      1  self-signed-certificates   edge        77   no

Unit                          Workload  Agent  Machine  Public address  Ports  Message
mysql/0*                      active    idle   0        10.234.188.135         Primary
mysql/1                       active    idle   1        10.234.188.214
self-signed-certificates/1*   active    idle   6        10.234.188.19

Machine  State    Address         Inst id        Series  AZ  Message
0        started  10.234.188.135  juju-ff9064-0  jammy       Running
1        started  10.234.188.214  juju-ff9064-1  jammy       Running
6        started  10.234.188.19   juju-ff9064-6  focal       Running

Integrate with MySQL

To enable TLS on Charmed MySQL, integrate the two applications:

juju integrate mysql self-signed-certificates

MySQL is now using TLS certificate generated by the self-signed-certificates charm.

Check the TLS certificate in use

Use openssl to connect to MySQL and check the TLS certificate in use:

> openssl s_client -starttls mysql -connect 10.234.188.135:3306 | grep Issuer
...
depth=1 C = US, CN = self-signed-certificates-operator
...

Disable TLS

To remove the external TLS and return to the locally generate one, remove the integration from the applications:

juju remove-relation mysql self-signed-certificates

If you once again check the TLS certificates in use via the OpenSSL client, you will see something similar to the output below:

> openssl s_client -starttls mysql -connect 10.234.188.135:3306 | grep Issuer

...
depth=1 CN = MySQL_Server_8.0.32_Auto_Generated_CA_Certificate
...

The Charmed MySQL application reverted to the placeholder certificate that was created locally during the MySQL server installation.

Next step: 7. Clean up your environment