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Create the necessary secrets

In order for the operator to be able to manage your cluster, you will need to provide it with an API key with the appropriate permissions.

Get your organization id​

In the upper left part of the Atlas UI, you will see your organization name in a dropdown. Right next to the dropdown is a gear icon. Clicking on this icon will open up a page called Organization Settings.

From this page, look for a box labeled Organization ID.

Save that organization id somewhere for future use. You can also save it in an environment variable.

export ORG_ID=60c102....bd

Create an API key​

From the same screen, look for the Access Manager option in the left navigation menu. This will bring you to the Organization Access screen. In this screen, follow the instructions to create a new API key.

The key will need the Organization Project Creator role in order to create new projects and clusters. If you want to manage existing clusters, you will need to provide it with the Project Owner role.

Save the API private and public keys. You can also add them to the environment.

export ATLAS_PUBLIC_KEY=iwpd...i
export ATLAS_PRIVATE_KEY=e13debfb-4f35-4...cb

Create the Kubernetes secrets​

Now that you have created the API key, you can specify those values to the MongoDB Atlas Operator. This will give the operator the necessary permissions to create and manage projects and clusters.

You can create the secret with kubectl.

kubectl create secret generic mongodb-atlas-operator-api-key \
    --from-literal="orgId=$ORG_ID" \
    --from-literal="publicApiKey=$ATLAS_PUBLIC_KEY" \
    --from-literal="privateApiKey=$ATLAS_PRIVATE_KEY" \
    -n mongodb-atlas-system

You then need to label this secret so the operator knows how to find it.

kubectl label secret mongodb-atlas-operator-api-key atlas.mongodb.com/type=credentials -n mongodb-atlas-system

Create a user password​

Our database user will have a password. You won't want to hard code this password into your yaml files. It is safer to save it as a Kubernetes secret. Just like the API key, this secret will need to be labeled too.

kubectl create secret generic atlaspassword --from-literal="password=mernk8s"
kubectl label secret atlaspassword atlas.mongodb.com/type=credentials