Network Encryption (TLS)

Enabling TLS

The sections below describe how to enable TLS for MinIO. You may use TLS certificates from a well-known Certificate Authority, an internal or private CA, or self-signed certs.

Before beginning, note these important points:

• Configure TLS on each node.

• Ensure certs are readable by the user who runs the MinIO Server process.

• Update MINIO_VOLUMES and any needed services or apps to use an HTTPS URL.

The MinIO server searches the following directory for TLS keys and certificates:

%%USERPROFILE%%\.minio\certs

For deployments started with a custom TLS directory minio server --certs-dir, use that directory instead of the defaults.

Place the TLS certificates for the default domain (e.g. minio.example.net) in the /certs directory, with the private key as private.key and public certificate as public.crt.

For example:

%%USERPROFILE%%\.minio\certs
  private.key
  public.crt

Where %%USERPROFILE%% is the location of the User Profile folder of the user running the MinIO Server process.

You can use the MinIO certgen to mint self-signed certificates for evaluating MinIO with TLS enabled. For example, the following command generates a self-signed certificate with a set of IP and DNS SANs associated to the MinIO Server hosts:

certgen.exe -host "localhost,minio-*.example.net"

Place the generated public.crt and private.key into the \.minio\certs directory to enable TLS for the MinIO deployment. Applications can use the public.crt as a trusted Certificate Authority to allow connections to the MinIO deployment without disabling certificate validation.

If you are reconfiguring an existing deployment that did not previously have TLS enabled, update MINIO_VOLUMES to specify https instead of http. You may also need to update URLs used by applications or clients.

%%USERPROFILE%%\.minio\certs
  private.key
  public.crt
  s3-example.net\
    private.key
    public.crt
  internal-example.net\
    private.key
    public.crt

Third-Party Certificate Authorities

The MinIO Server validates the TLS certificate presented by each connecting client against the host system’s trusted root certificate store.

You can place additional trusted Certificate Authority files in the following directory:

%%USERPROFILE%%\.minio\certs\CAs

Where %%USERPROFILE%% is the location of the User Profile folder of the user running the MinIO Server process.

For deployments started with a custom TLS directory minio server --certs-dir, the server searches in the \CAs path at that specified directory.

Place the certificate file for each CA into the /CAs subdirectory. Ensure all hosts in the MinIO deployment have a consistent set of trusted CAs in that directory. If the MinIO Server cannot match an incoming client’s TLS certificate issuer against any of the available CAs, the server rejects the connection as invalid.

Self-signed, Internal, Private Certificates, and Public CAs with Intermediate Certificates

If using Certificates signed by a non-global or non-public Certificate Authority, or if using a global CA that requires the use of intermediate certificates, you must provide those CAs to the MinIO Server. If the MinIO server does not have the necessary CAs, it may return warnings or errors related to TLS validation when connecting to other services.

Place the CA certificates in the /certs/CAs folder. The root path for this folder depends on whether you use the default certificate path or a custom certificate path (minio server --certs-dir or -S)

mv myCA.crt ${HOME}/.minio/certs/CAs

mv myCA.crt /opt/minio/certs/CAs/

For a self-signed certificate, the Certificate Authority is typically the private key used to sign the cert.

For certificates signed by an internal, private, or other non-global Certificate Authority, use the same CA that signed the cert. A non-global CA must include the full chain of trust from the intermediate certificate to the root.

If the provided file is not an X.509 certificate, MinIO ignores it and may return errors for validating certificates signed by that CA.