AWS Secrets Manager is a fully-managed service for managing sensitive digital credentials. Types of secrets that can be managed with AWS Secrets Manager include keys, passwords, tokens, and certificates. Secrets Manager can be used with other AWS services such as CloudTrail enabling sophisticated auditing and monitoring of secret storage and access.
One of AWS Secrets Manager's key features is the ability to automatically rotate a secret on a schedule. Secrets Manager integrates seamlessly with your existing AWS services, in addition, it can be easily configured to rotate credentials in external or unmanaged services using a custom Lambda function.
In this lab you will store a secret in Secrets Manager, you will update a Python web application to retrieve the secret and, you will enable automatic rotation of the password stored in the secret using Secrets Manager.
Learning Objectives
This is a beginner level lab, upon completion of this lab you will be able to:
- Create a password in Secrets Manager
- Update a Python application to fetch your password
- Enable automatic rotation of your password in Secrets Manager
Intended Audience
- Database Administrators (DBAs)
- Cloud Engineers
- Data Engineers
Prerequisites
You should have a conceptual understanding of databases and secret management
Knowledge of the Python programming language and the Linux command-line will be beneficial but is not required.
The following courses can be used to fulfill the prerequisites:
Updates
August 24th, 2023 - Resolved environment error
October 18th, 2022 - Resolved environment error
May 23, 2022 - Updated screenshots
April 7th, 2022 - Updated screenshots and instructions for accuracy
March 2nd, 2022 - Updated the instructions and screenshots to reflect the latest UI
January 17th, 2022 - Updated screenshot to reflect the latest UI
December 22nd, 2021 - Added warning about VPN interfering with stack creation
December 17th, 2021 - Updated rotation instructions to match the latest user-interface changes
November 2nd, 2021 - Clarified the template designer instructions
September 9th, 2021 - Clarified that the Python script should be indented with spaces
April 5th, 2021 - Updated the AWS CloudFormation step to avoid student network issues by using the designer instead of uploading a template file
July 20th, 2020 - Added a step detailing how to use Secrets Manager with AWS CloudFormation
Andrew is a Labs Developer with previous experience in the Internet Service Provider, Audio Streaming, and CryptoCurrency industries. He has also been a DevOps Engineer and enjoys working with CI/CD and Kubernetes.
He holds multiple AWS certifications including Solutions Architect Associate and Professional.