Certificate Management on Support Tools

K3s Certificate Expiration and Unauthorized Access: Complete Troubleshooting Guide for Production Kubernetes Clusters

Mon, 17 Aug 2026 00:00:00 -0500

Certificate expiration in K3s clusters represents one of the most critical operational challenges that can completely lock administrators out of their Kubernetes environments. When client certificates expire, the dreaded “Unauthorized” error appears, potentially rendering entire production clusters inaccessible and causing significant operational disruption.

This comprehensive guide provides enterprise-grade solutions for diagnosing, resolving, and preventing K3s certificate expiration issues, with detailed troubleshooting procedures, automated monitoring solutions, and proactive certificate management strategies.

Honeycomb Certificate Expiry Outage: 2.5-Hour Production Incident Analysis

Tue, 04 Aug 2026 00:00:00 -0500

On April 27, 2022, Honeycomb experienced a 2.5-hour production outage that affected their entire Kubernetes infrastructure. The root cause was deceptively simple: expired certificates for the Kubernetes API server. This incident highlights a critical blindspot in many production Kubernetes deployments—certificate lifecycle management. In this comprehensive analysis, we’ll examine the incident, its root causes, and implement production-ready solutions to prevent similar failures.

Advanced PKI Certificate Management for Enterprise Infrastructure: Complete Implementation Guide

Mon, 13 Apr 2026 00:00:00 -0500

Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) forms the backbone of modern enterprise security, enabling secure communications, authentication, and data integrity across distributed systems. This comprehensive guide covers advanced PKI certificate management strategies, from establishing certificate authorities to implementing automated certificate lifecycle management in large-scale enterprise environments.

Rotating RKE2 Certificates Before Expiration: A Necessary Practice

Wed, 28 Feb 2024 10:00:00 -0500

In the lifecycle of a Kubernetes cluster managed by RKE2, one critical maintenance task stands out for its importance in ensuring the security and reliability of the cluster: certificate rotation. This blog post delves into the significance of rotating RKE2 certificates before they expire after one year, outlining the necessary steps to prevent potential security vulnerabilities or service interruptions.