certificates

TLS certificates encrypt traffic between clients and servers. Let's Encrypt provides free, automated certificates via the ACME protocol. In Kubernetes, cert-manager automates certificate issuance and renewal. A ClusterIssuer configures the ACME server

Certificate expiry outages are avoidable with boring automation and good alerting. I use automatic renewal, post-renew validation hooks, and external checks that warn well before expiry. TLS is not finished once the first certificate works.