certctl/docs/operator/runbooks/expiry-alerts.md

Runbook: certificate-expiry alerts (multi-channel)

Last reviewed: 2026-05-05

This runbook covers the per-policy multi-channel expiry-alert dispatch path that ships in certctl post-2026-05-03 (Rank 4 of the Infisical deep-research deliverable). It complements the operator-facing Routing expiry alerts across channels section in docs/connectors.md.

Audience: a platform sysadmin or on-call engineer who needs to configure, debug, or audit certctl's expiry-alert routing. Not a walkthrough of how to install certctl — that lives in the README.

---

End-to-end flow

flowchart TD
    Tick["daily ticker (renewalCheckLoop)"]
    Check["RenewalService.CheckExpiringCertificates"]

    Tick --> Check --> Loop

    subgraph Loop["for cert in expiring (≤30 days)"]
        L1["1. Resolve RenewalPolicy"]
        L2["2. Compute daysUntil"]
        L3["3. updateCertExpiryStatus"]
        L4["4. sendThresholdAlerts"]
        L5["5. Create renewal job<br/>(if issuer registered +<br/>ARI allows)"]
        L1 --> L2 --> L3 --> L4 --> L5
    end

    L4 --> Threshold

    subgraph Threshold["per threshold"]
        T1["a. resolve severity tier<br/>via AlertSeverityMap"]
        T2["b. resolve channel set<br/>via AlertChannels[tier]"]
        T1 --> T2 --> Channel
    end

    subgraph Channel["for each channel (fault-isolating)"]
        C1["i. dedup via notification_events<br/>(cert, threshold, channel)"]
        C2["ii. SendThresholdAlertOnChannel<br/>→ notifierRegistry[channel]<br/>→ Send(recipient, subj, body)"]
        C3["iii. record audit row<br/>event_type=expiration_alert_sent<br/>metadata.channel, metadata.severity_tier"]
        C4["iv. bump Prometheus counter<br/>certctl_expiry_alerts_total<br/>{channel, threshold, result}"]
        C1 --> C2 --> C3 --> C4
    end

The dispatch loop's per-channel error handling is fault-isolating: PagerDuty's failure does NOT skip Slack/Email at the same threshold. Each channel runs independently, with its own dedup row + audit row + metric increment.

---

Configuring the per-policy channel matrix

The matrix is a property of RenewalPolicy. Two new JSONB columns on the renewal_policies table back it (migration 000026):

• alert_channels JSONB — map[severity_tier][]channel_name. Default {} → fall through to DefaultAlertChannels (Email-only at every tier).
• alert_severity_map JSONB — map[threshold_days]severity_tier. Default {} → fall through to DefaultAlertSeverityMap (30→informational, 14→warning, 7→warning, 0→critical).

Example: production-grade routing

curl -X PUT https://certctl.example.com/api/v1/renewal-policies/rp-production \
  -H 'Authorization: Bearer ${TOKEN}' \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -d '{
    "name": "Production CDN renewal policy",
    "renewal_window_days": 30,
    "auto_renew": true,
    "max_retries": 3,
    "retry_interval_seconds": 300,
    "alert_thresholds_days": [30, 14, 7, 0],
    "alert_channels": {
      "informational": ["Slack"],
      "warning":       ["Slack", "Email"],
      "critical":      ["PagerDuty", "OpsGenie", "Email"]
    },
    "alert_severity_map": {
      "30": "informational",
      "14": "warning",
      "7":  "warning",
      "0":  "critical"
    }
  }'

After this PUT, the next renewal-loop tick that finds a cert under this policy will fan out alerts as documented above.

Example: opt out of informational alerts

If your team doesn't want T-30 informational alerts (you'd rather hear about a cert only at warning tier and beyond):

"alert_channels": {
  "informational": [],
  "warning":       ["Email"],
  "critical":      ["PagerDuty", "Email"]
}

The empty informational list causes the dispatch loop to record an expiration_alert_skipped_no_channels audit row at T-30 and skip the dispatch. Other tiers still fire.

---

Operator playbook

"Did the on-call team get paged?"

SELECT created_at,
       metadata->>'channel'        AS channel,
       metadata->>'threshold_days' AS threshold,
       metadata->>'severity_tier'  AS severity
FROM audit_events
WHERE event_type = 'expiration_alert_sent'
  AND resource_id = '<cert-id>'
ORDER BY created_at DESC;

One row per (channel, threshold) attempt. If you see a row with channel = 'PagerDuty' and severity = 'critical', the page went out (or was at least dispatched to the notifier).

"Why didn't I get an alert at T-7?"

Three places to look:

1. Audit log — SELECT FROM audit_events WHERE event_type IN ('expiration_alert_sent','expiration_alert_skipped_no_channels', 'expiration_alert_skipped_invalid_channel') AND resource_id = '<cert-id>'. If expiration_alert_skipped_no_channels appears, your policy's tier list is empty for the resolved tier. If expiration_alert_skipped_invalid_channel appears, your matrix has a typo (the metadata->>'invalid_channel' field tells you which value).

2. Notifications table — SELECT FROM notification_events WHERE certificate_id = '<cert-id>' AND type = 'ExpirationWarning' ORDER BY created_at DESC. If rows exist with channel = 'Slack' and status = 'failed', the dispatch reached the channel but the channel rejected the send. Look at the error column for the upstream message.

3. Prometheus counters — curl /api/v1/metrics/prometheus | grep certctl_expiry_alerts_total. Sustained {result="failure"} counts indicate a notifier connector misconfiguration (bad webhook URL, expired API key, etc.).

"How do I test the matrix without waiting for a real expiry?"

certctl ships an admin endpoint for this:

curl -X POST https://certctl.example.com/api/v1/admin/notifications/test \
  -H 'Authorization: Bearer ${TOKEN}' \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -d '{
    "certificate_id": "mc-test-cert",
    "threshold_days": 0,
    "channel": "PagerDuty"
  }'

This calls NotificationService.SendThresholdAlertOnChannel directly and bypasses the renewal loop's threshold check. Useful for "did I configure PagerDuty correctly?" without having to set up a deliberately-expiring cert. The admin endpoint requires role=admin (V3-Pro RBAC); V2 deploys gate it on the bearer token only.

"How do I rotate a notifier credential without downtime?"

1. Update the CERTCTL_PAGERDUTY_ROUTING_KEY (or equivalent) env var in your deployment.
2. Restart certctl-server. The notifier registry rebuilds with the new credential.
3. Confirm with the admin-test endpoint above against the cert you most care about.

The renewal loop is idempotent — a missed tick during the restart window does NOT cause double-dispatch on the next tick (per-channel dedup on the notification_events table guards against that).

---

Cardinality + cost

• Default 6 channels × 4 thresholds × 3 results = 72 Prometheus series.
• Custom-thresholds policies (e.g. [60, 45, 30, 14, 7, 3, 1, 0]) expand the threshold dimension proportionally — 6 × 8 × 3 = 144 series.
• Closed-enum discipline at the dispatch site means typos in alert_channels do NOT grow this count.
• A daily renewal-loop tick over 10K certs each policy-bound to the matrix above produces O(channels × thresholds × certs) audit rows
  • notification rows in the worst case (every cert has crossed every threshold and no dedup applies). Operators sizing Postgres should plan for an audit_events row count on the order of unique_certs × channels_per_critical_tier per fan-out batch — which is ~3-5× the pre-Rank-4 row count.

---

V3-Pro forward path

Tracked at cowork/WORKSPACE-ROADMAP.md under "Adapter hardening":

• Per-owner / per-team / per-tenant channel routing (the matrix is per-policy today, not per-owner).
• Calendar-aware suppression (no T-30 alerts on weekends for non- on-call teams).
• Escalation chains (T-1 unanswered for 30m → escalate to manager's PagerDuty).
• Per-channel rate limiting (downstream of I-005's retry+DLQ).