Certctl — Open-Source Certificate Control Plane

A self-hosted, cloud-agnostic certificate management platform for teams. Manage issuance, deployment, and renewal of TLS certificates at scale with zero private key exposure in the control plane.

Overview

Certctl decouples certificate management into a control plane and lightweight agents deployed across your infrastructure. The control plane orchestrates issuance and renewal via multiple ACME issuers, while agents securely request, deploy, and renew certificates on target systems—all without exposing private keys outside the edge.

Why Certctl?

• Decoupled architecture: Control plane + edge agents, no SSH or privileged access required
• Multi-issuer support: ACME (Let's Encrypt, Sectigo, etc.), with extensible connector framework
• Zero private key exposure: Keys generated and managed on agents, never sent to control plane
• Audit-first design: Every action logged with full traceability
• Connector ecosystem: Extensible issuer, target, and notifier connectors
• Self-hosted: Run on Kubernetes, Docker Compose, or bare metal—no cloud lock-in
• Production-ready: Graceful error handling, observability, database-backed state

Quick Start

With Docker Compose (Recommended)

# Clone the repo
git clone https://github.com/shankar0123/certctl.git
cd certctl

# Copy example environment variables
cp .env.example .env

# Start the stack
make docker-up

# Check health
curl http://localhost:8443/health

The stack includes PostgreSQL, certctl server, and a sample agent. Logs available via:

make docker-logs-server
make docker-logs-agent

Manual Build & Run

Prerequisites

• Go 1.22+
• PostgreSQL 14+
• (Optional) Docker & Docker Compose

Build from Source

# Install dependencies
go mod download

# Build binaries
make build

# Run migrations
export DB_URL="postgres://certctl:certctl@localhost:5432/certctl?sslmode=disable"
make migrate-up

# Start server (in one terminal)
make run

# Start agent (in another terminal, with API key from server logs)
API_KEY="<key-from-server>" SERVER_URL=http://localhost:8443 ./bin/agent

Architecture

System Components

┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│                   CONTROL PLANE                         │
│  ┌──────────────────────────────────────────────────┐   │
│  │ API Server (8443)                                │   │
│  │  • Certificate management                        │   │
│  │  • Issuance orchestration                        │   │
│  │  • Audit logging                                 │   │
│  └──────────────────────────────────────────────────┘   │
│  ┌──────────────────────────────────────────────────┐   │
│  │ PostgreSQL Database                              │   │
│  │  • Certificates, agents, targets, policies       │   │
│  │  • Complete audit trail                          │   │
│  └──────────────────────────────────────────────────┘   │
└─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
         │                           │
         │ (mTLS + API Key)          │
         │                           │
    ┌────┴────┐             ┌────────┴────┐
    │         │             │             │
┌───┴──┐  ┌──┴───┐   ┌─────┴──┐  ┌──────┴────┐
│Agent │  │Agent │   │ Agent  │  │   Agent   │
│  #1  │  │  #2  │   │  #3    │  │   #N      │
└──────┘  └──────┘   └────────┘  └───────────┘
   │         │           │           │
   ├────┬────┼────┬───┬──┴─────┬─────┴──┬───┐
   │    │    │    │   │        │        │   │
┌──┴─┐┌─┴──┐┌───┴──┐│┌───────┐│┌──────┐│   │
│ACME││K8s ││F5 ││Vault│  │Webhook│
│    ││LB ││LB  ││  │   │
└────┘└────┘└────┘└────┘└──────┘

Data Flow: Certificate Issuance

1. Create Certificate → Control plane stores managed certificate record
2. Generate CSR → Agent creates private key (stays local) and CSR
3. Request Certificate → Agent sends CSR to control plane
4. Issue via ACME → Control plane submits to issuer (Let's Encrypt, etc.)
5. Return Certificate → Agent receives signed cert, stores locally
6. Deploy → Agent pushes certificate to targets (NGINX, F5, IIS, etc.)
7. Notify → Webhook or email notification sent on completion

Database Schema Overview

Entity	Purpose
certificates	Managed certificate records with metadata
agents	Registered agents in the fleet
targets	Deployment targets (NGINX, F5, IIS, etc.)
issuers	ACME issuer configurations
jobs	Issuance and deployment jobs
audit_logs	Complete action trail

Configuration

Environment Variables

Variable	Default	Description
SERVER_HOST	0.0.0.0	Server bind address
SERVER_PORT	8443	Server listen port
DB_HOST	localhost	PostgreSQL host
DB_PORT	5432	PostgreSQL port
DB_USER	certctl	Database user
DB_PASSWORD	—	Database password
DB_NAME	certctl	Database name
LOG_LEVEL	info	Log level (debug, info, warn, error)
ACME_DIRECTORY_URL	staging	ACME directory URL
ACME_EMAIL	—	ACME registration email
SMTP_HOST	—	SMTP server for email notifications
SMTP_PORT	587	SMTP port
SMTP_USERNAME	—	SMTP username
SMTP_PASSWORD	—	SMTP password
SMTP_FROM_ADDRESS	—	Email from address

See .env.example for complete reference.

API Overview

Key Endpoints

Certificates

• POST /api/v1/certificates — Create managed certificate
• GET /api/v1/certificates — List certificates
• GET /api/v1/certificates/:id — Get certificate details
• PUT /api/v1/certificates/:id — Update certificate
• DELETE /api/v1/certificates/:id — Archive certificate

Agents

• POST /api/v1/agents — Register new agent
• GET /api/v1/agents — List agents
• GET /api/v1/agents/:id — Get agent details
• PUT /api/v1/agents/:id — Update agent

Targets

• POST /api/v1/targets — Add deployment target
• GET /api/v1/targets — List targets
• PUT /api/v1/targets/:id — Update target
• DELETE /api/v1/targets/:id — Remove target

Issuers

• POST /api/v1/issuers — Register ACME issuer
• GET /api/v1/issuers — List issuers
• PUT /api/v1/issuers/:id — Update issuer

Audit

• GET /api/v1/audit/logs — Query audit trail
• GET /api/v1/audit/logs/:id — Get specific log entry

System

• GET /health — Health check

Full API docs: docs/api.md (coming soon)

Agent Setup Guide

Installation

Agents can be deployed as:

• Docker container: docker pull certctl:agent
• Systemd service: systemctl start certctl-agent
• Kubernetes DaemonSet: See docs/k8s-deployment.md

Configuration

Agents require:

1. Server URL: Control plane address (e.g., https://certctl.example.com:8443)
2. API Key: Issued by control plane on agent registration
3. Agent Name: Unique identifier in fleet

Example systemd unit:

[Unit]
Description=Certctl Agent
After=network.target

[Service]
Type=simple
ExecStart=/opt/certctl-agent/agent
Environment="SERVER_URL=https://certctl.example.com:8443"
Environment="API_KEY=ey..."
Environment="AGENT_NAME=prod-web-01"
Restart=on-failure
RestartSec=10s

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Supported Integrations

Certificate Issuers

Issuer	Status	Connector
Let's Encrypt (ACME v2)	✓ Production	acme
Sectigo ACME	✓ Tested	acme
Vault PKI	◐ Planned	vault
DigiCert	◐ Planned	digicert

Deployment Targets

Target	Status	Connector
NGINX	✓ Production	nginx
F5 BIG-IP	✓ Tested	f5
Microsoft IIS	✓ Tested	iis
Kubernetes Secrets	◐ Planned	k8s
AWS CloudFront	◐ Planned	aws

Notifiers

Notifier	Status	Connector
Email (SMTP)	✓ Production	email
Webhooks	✓ Production	webhook
Slack	◐ Planned	slack
PagerDuty	◐ Planned	pagerduty

Development

Local Setup

make install-tools
cp .env.example .env
make docker-up-dev

# Access PgAdmin at http://localhost:5050
# Server logs: make docker-logs-server

Testing

# Run all tests
make test

# Run with coverage
make test-coverage

# Run specific package
go test -v ./internal/service/...

Linting & Format

make lint
make fmt
make vet

Building Connectors

See docs/connectors.md for a step-by-step guide to building issuers, targets, and notifier connectors.

Contributing

1. Fork the repository
2. Create a feature branch: git checkout -b feature/my-feature
3. Commit changes: git commit -am 'Add feature'
4. Push to branch: git push origin feature/my-feature
5. Open a pull request

Code Standards

• Go 1.22+ with go fmt, go vet, golangci-lint
• Tests required for new features (>80% coverage)
• Clear commit messages
• Update relevant documentation

Security

Private Key Management

• Private keys never sent to control plane
• Keys generated and managed exclusively on agents
• Encrypted at rest on agent systems
• Cleared from memory after use

Authentication

• Agent-to-server: mTLS + API key
• API key rotation supported
• Audit logging of all authenticated actions

Audit Trail

• Complete action history in PostgreSQL
• Immutable audit logs
• Queryable by resource, user, timestamp, action

For security issues, email security@example.com (do not open public issues).

Performance & Scaling

• Agents: Stateless, horizontal scaling via fleet management
• Control Plane: Single server handles 1000+ agents
• Database: PostgreSQL; vertical scaling recommended
• Jobs: Asynchronous processing; tunable concurrency

See docs/scaling.md for deployment guidance.

Troubleshooting

Server Won't Start

# Check database connection
psql -h localhost -U certctl -d certctl

# Check logs
make docker-logs-server

# Verify environment variables
env | grep -E "DB_|SERVER_|ACME_"

Agent Can't Connect

# Check server health
curl -v https://certctl.example.com:8443/health

# Verify API key
echo $API_KEY

# Check agent logs
make docker-logs-agent

Certificate Not Deploying

1. Check agent is registered: curl http://localhost:8443/api/v1/agents
2. Check target is reachable: curl http://target-server:22 (SSH test)
3. Review audit log: curl http://localhost:8443/api/v1/audit/logs

Roadmap

• Kubernetes CRD for certificate management
• Terraform provider
• Multi-region deployment
• HA control plane with etcd backend
• Advanced scheduling policies
• Certificate pinning validation
• Hardware security module (HSM) support

License

Certctl is licensed under the Apache License 2.0. See LICENSE file for details.