By default, The internal communication between Harbor’s component (harbor-core,harbor-jobservice,proxy,harbor-portal,registry,registryctl,trivy_adapter,chartmuseum) use HTTP protocol which might not be secure enough for some production environment. Since Harbor v2.0, TLS can be used for this internal network. In production environments, always use HTTPS is a recommended best practice.

This functionality is introduced via the internal_tls in harbor.yml file. To enabled internal TLS, set enabled to true and set the dir value to the path of directory that contains the internal cert files.

All certs can be automatically generated by prepare tool.

docker run -v /:/hostfs goharbor/prepare:<current_harbor_version> gencert -p /path/to/internal/tls/cert

User also can provide their own CA to generate the other certs. Just put certificate and key of the CA on internal tls cert directory and name them as harbor_internal_ca.key and harbor_internal_ca.crt. Besides, a user can also provide the certs for all components. However, there are some constraints for the certs:

• First, all certs must be signed by a single unique CA
• Second, the filename of the internal cert and CN field on cert file must follow the convention listed below.
• Third, because the self signed certificate without SAN was deprecated in Golang 1.5, you must add the SAN extension to your cert files when generating certs by yourself or the Harbor instance will not start up normally. The DNS name in SAN extension should the same as CN field in the table below. For more information please refer to golang 1.5 release notes and this issue.

  name	usage	CN
  harbor_internal_ca.key	ca’s key file for internal TLS	N/A
  harbor_internal_ca.crt	ca’s certificate file for internal TLS	N/A
  core.key	core’s key file	N/A
  core.crt	core’s certificate file	core
  job_service.key	job_service’s key file	N/A
  job_service.crt	job_service’s certificate file	jobservice
  proxy.key	proxy’s key file	N/A
  proxy.crt	proxy’s certificate file	proxy
  portal.key	portal’s key file	N/A
  portal.crt	portal’s certificate file	portal
  registry.key	registry’s key file	N/A
  registry.crt	registry’s certificate file	registry
  registryctl.key	registryctl’s key file	N/A
  registryctl.crt	registryctl’s certificate file	registryctl
  trivy_adapter.key	trivy_adapter.’s key file	N/A
  trivy_adapter.crt	trivy_adapter.’s certificate file	trivy-adapter