ExternalDNS Webhook Provider for UniFi

  

ExternalDNS is a Kubernetes add-on for automatically managing DNS records for Kubernetes ingresses and services by using different DNS providers. This webhook provider allows you to automate DNS records from your Kubernetes clusters into your UniFi Network controller.

🎯 Requirements

• ExternalDNS >= v0.14.0
• UniFi OS >= 3.x
• UniFi Network >= 8.2.93

🚫 Limitations

• Wildcard CNAME Records are not supported by UniFi.

⛵ Deployment

Gathering your credentials

UniFi Api Key - Network v9.0.0+

1. Open your UniFi Console's Network Settings and go to Settings > Control Plane > Admins & Users.

2. Selecting your user to operate under. Whenever we modify the DNS Records, this user will show up under System Log > Admin Activity

3. Go under Control Plane API Key and click Create New. You can set the name to whatever you want, and the expiration to whatever you feel like.

4. Create a Kubernetes secret called external-dns-unifi-secret that will hold your UNIFI_API_KEY with their respected values from Step 3.

---
apiVersion: v1
kind: Secret
metadata:
    name: external-dns-unifi-secret
data:
  api-key: <your-api-key>

Username & Password (Deprecated)

1. Open your UniFi Console's Network Settings and go to Settings > Control Plane > Admins & Users.

2. Select Create New Admin.

3. In the menu that appears, enable Restrict to Local Access Only. Deselect Use a Predefined Role. Set Network: Site Admin. All other selections can be set to None. Click Create.

4. Create a Kubernetes secret called external-dns-unifi-secret that holds the username and password with their respected values from Step 3.

---
apiVersion: v1
kind: Secret
metadata:
    name: external-dns-unifi-secret
data:
  username: <your-username>
  password: <your-password>

Installing the provider

1. Add the ExternalDNS Helm repository to your cluster.

   helm repo add external-dns https://kubernetes-sigs.github.io/external-dns/

2. Deploy your external-dns-unifi-secret secret that holds your authentication credentials from either of the credential types above.

3. Create the helm values file, for example external-dns-unifi-values.yaml:

   fullnameOverride: external-dns-unifi
   logLevel: &logLevel debug
   provider:
     name: webhook
     webhook:
       image:
         repository: ghcr.io/kashalls/external-dns-unifi-webhook
         tag: main # replace with a versioned release tag
       env:
         - name: UNIFI_HOST
           value: https://192.168.1.1 # replace with the address to your UniFi router/controller
         - name: UNIFI_EXTERNAL_CONTROLLER
           value: "false"
         - name: UNIFI_API_KEY
           valueFrom:
             secretKeyRef:
               name: external-dns-unifi-secret
               key: api-key
         - name: LOG_LEVEL
           value: *logLevel
       livenessProbe:
         httpGet:
           path: /healthz
           port: http-webhook
         initialDelaySeconds: 10
         timeoutSeconds: 5
       readinessProbe:
         httpGet:
           path: /readyz
           port: http-webhook
         initialDelaySeconds: 10
         timeoutSeconds: 5
   extraArgs:
     - --ignore-ingress-tls-spec
   policy: sync
   sources: ["ingress", "service"]
   txtOwnerId: default
   txtPrefix: k8s.
   domainFilters: ["example.com"] # replace with your domain

4. Install the Helm chart

   helm install external-dns-unifi external-dns/external-dns -f external-dns-unifi-values.yaml --version 1.15.0 -n external-dns

Configuration

Unifi Controller Configuration

Environment Variable	Description	Default Value
UNIFI_API_KEY	The local api key provided for your user	N/A
UNIFI_USER	Username for the Unifi Controller (deprecated use UNIFI_API_KEY).	N/A
UNIFI_PASS	Password for the Unifi Controller (deprecated use UNIFI_API_KEY).	N/A
UNIFI_SKIP_TLS_VERIFY	Whether to skip TLS verification (true or false).	true
UNIFI_SITE	Unifi Site Identifier (used in multi-site installations)	default
UNIFI_HOST	Host of the Unifi Controller (must be provided).	N/A
UNIFI_EXTERNAL_CONTROLLER*	Toggles support for non-UniFi Hardware	false
LOG_LEVEL	Change the verbosity of logs (used when making a bug report)	info

*UNIFI_EXTERNAL_CONTROLLER is used to toggle between two versions of the Network Controller API. If you are running the UniFi software outside of UniFi's official hardware (e.g., Cloud Key or Dream Machine), you'll need to set UNIFI_EXTERNAL_CONTROLLER to true

Server Configuration

Environment Variable	Description	Default Value
SERVER_HOST	The host address where the server listens.	localhost
SERVER_PORT	The port where the server listens.	8888
SERVER_READ_TIMEOUT	Duration the server waits before timing out on read operations.	N/A
SERVER_WRITE_TIMEOUT	Duration the server waits before timing out on write operations.	N/A
DOMAIN_FILTER	List of domains to include in the filter.	Empty
EXCLUDE_DOMAIN_FILTER	List of domains to exclude from filtering.	Empty
REGEXP_DOMAIN_FILTER	Regular expression for filtering domains.	Empty
REGEXP_DOMAIN_FILTER_EXCLUSION	Regular expression for excluding domains from the filter.	Empty

⭐ Stargazers

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🤝 Gratitude and Thanks

Thanks to all the people who donate their time to the Home Operations Discord community.