Your First Secret

If you successfully completed the steps in Starting the Server, you started the dev server and exported the VAULT_TOKEN to the initial root token value so that vault login is not required to authenticate. If you have not yet completed those steps, please review that tutorial and do so before proceeding here.

Now that the dev server is up and running, let's get straight to it and read and write your first secret.

NOTE: An interactive tutorial is also available to perform the steps described in this tutorial. Click the Show Terminal button to start.

»Key/Value secrets engine

When running Vault in dev mode, Key/Value v2 secrets engine is enabled at secret/ path. Key/Value secrets engine is a generic key-value store used to store arbitrary secrets within the configured physical storage for Vault. Secrets written to Vault are encrypted and then written to backend storage. Therefore, the backend storage mechanism never sees the unencrypted value and doesn't have the means necessary to decrypt it without Vault.

Key/Value secrets engine has version 1 and 2. The difference is that v2 provides versioning of secrets and v1 does not.

Use the vault kv <subcommand> [options] [args] command to interact with K/V secrets engine.

Available subcommands:

»Writing a Secret

Before you begin, check to verify that no secrets exists at secret/hello.

$ vault kv get secret/hello
No value found at secret/data/hello

$ vault kv get secret/helloNo value found at secret/data/hello

Now, write a secret foo with value of world to the path secret/hello using the vault kv put command. This command creates a new version of the secrets and replaces any pre-existing data at the path if any.

$ vault kv put secret/hello foo=world

Key              Value
---              -----
created_time     2020-09-02T21:40:01.635656Z
deletion_time    n/a
destroyed        false
version          1

$ vault kv put secret/hello foo=world
Key              Value---              -----created_time     2020-09-02T21:40:01.635656Zdeletion_time    n/adestroyed        falseversion          1

You will learn paths in more detail later, but for now it is important that the path is prefixed with secret/, otherwise this example won't work. The secret/ prefix is where arbitrary secrets can be read and written.

You can even write multiple pieces of data.

$ vault kv put secret/hello foo=world excited=yes

Key              Value
---              -----
created_time     2020-09-02T21:41:17.568155Z
deletion_time    n/a
destroyed        false
version          2

$ vault kv put secret/hello foo=world excited=yes
Key              Value---              -----created_time     2020-09-02T21:41:17.568155Zdeletion_time    n/adestroyed        falseversion          2

Notice that the version is now 2.

»Getting a Secret

As you might expect, secrets can be retrieved with vault kv get <path>.

$ vault kv get secret/hello

====== Metadata ======
Key              Value
---              -----
created_time     2020-09-02T21:41:17.568155Z
deletion_time    n/a
destroyed        false
version          2

===== Data =====
Key        Value
---        -----
excited    yes
foo        world

$ vault kv get secret/hello
====== Metadata ======Key              Value---              -----created_time     2020-09-02T21:41:17.568155Zdeletion_time    n/adestroyed        falseversion          2
===== Data =====Key        Value---        -----excited    yesfoo        world

Vault returns the latest version (in this case version 2) of the secrets at secret/hello.

To print only the value of a given field, use the -field=<key_name> flag.

$ vault kv get -field=excited secret/hello

yes

$ vault kv get -field=excited secret/hello
yes

Optional JSON output is very useful for scripts. For example, you can use the jq tool to extract the value of the excited secret.

$ vault kv get -format=json secret/hello | jq -r .data.data.excited

yes

$ vault kv get -format=json secret/hello | jq -r .data.data.excited
yes

»Deleting a Secret

Now that you've learned how to read and write a secret, let's go ahead and delete it. You can do so using the vault kv delete command.

$ vault kv delete secret/hello

Success! Data deleted (if it existed) at: secret/hello

$ vault kv delete secret/hello
Success! Data deleted (if it existed) at: secret/hello

»Next

In this tutorial, you learned how to use the powerful CRUD features of Vault to store arbitrary secrets. On its own, this is already a useful but basic feature. Key/Value secrets engine is one of the secrets engines that Vault offers.

Continue to the Secrets Engine tutorial for a quick tour of Vault secrets engine.

»Help and reference

This tutorial only touched the basis of the Key/Value secrets engine. To learn more about the features of Key/Value secrets engines, go through the following tutorials:

• Versioned Key/Value Secrets Engine
• Static Secrets: Key/Value Secrets Engine