Centralizing AI Environment Secrets with GitLab Group Variables

Centralizing AI Environment Secrets with GitLab

To centralize AI environment secrets, we'll leverage GitLab Group Variables provided by the GitLab provider in Pulumi. GitLab Group Variables are a key-value pair mechanism for storing variables at the group level inside GitLab. They can be particularly useful to store sensitive information like API keys, passwords, and other secrets that you don't want to hard code in your source files or pipelines.

We'll create a Pulumi program that defines a GitLab group and sets up a secret variable within that group. This is the variable we'd treat as a secret for our AI environment.

Here's what we'll do step-by-step in the Pulumi program:

Create or reference an existing GitLab group.
Define a group-level variable which will contain the secret.
Set properties to protect the variable (if needed).

Before you begin, make sure you have the following prerequisites in place:

Pulumi CLI installed and set up with access to your GitLab account.
A GitLab account with permissions to create or manage groups and variables.

Now, let's go through the Pulumi program that will create a GitLab group variable:

import pulumi
import pulumi_gitlab as gitlab

# Replace 'your_group_id' with the ID of your GitLab group where you want to add a secret variable
group_id = 'your_group_id'

# Create a new Group Variable in GitLab to store a secret for our AI environment.
# Replace 'secret_key' with the name of the secret variable you want to create.
# Replace 'secret_value' with the value of your secret, such as an API key or password.
ai_env_secret = gitlab.GroupVariable('ai-env-secret',
    key='secret_key',
    value='secret_value',
    group=group_id,
    # You might want to set the 'protected' flag to 'True' if you want this secret to be available
    # only to protected branches and tags. This ensures the secret isn't inadvertently exposed. 
    protected=False,
    # Setting 'masked' to True will ensure that the variable's value is hidden in job logs.
    masked=True,
)

# Export the Group Variable ID so you can reference it elsewhere.
# This ID is not sensitive as it doesn't give away the secret itself, only its GitLab identifier.
pulumi.export('group_variable_id', ai_env_secret.id)

In this program, we're using the GroupVariable resource to create a group variable which we're treating as our secret. The key property is the name of the variable that you'll refer to within your CI/CD pipelines or any scripts where you need the secret. The value is where you'll put the actual secret data you want to store securely.

After running this Pulumi program, you'll have a variable named secret_key in your specified group on GitLab. This variable will be protected if you set protected as True, ensuring it's available only in a secure context, and masked, keeping it hidden in the job logs.

Please replace the 'your_group_id', 'secret_key', and 'secret_value' placeholders with your actual group ID and secrets before running the program.

Remember, do not commit the actual secrets into your version control; treat the secret_value with care and inject it into the Pulumi program in a secure manner (for example, using environment variables or a secrets manager).

This program centralizes your AI environment secrets, making them easily accessible across multiple projects and pipelines within the same group in GitLab, while maintaining security and confidentiality.