TLS Connections

It is possible to encrypt connections between FerretDB and clients by using TLS. All you need to do is to start the server with the following flags or environment variables:

• --listen-tls / FERRETDB_LISTEN_TLS specifies the TCP hostname and port that will be used for listening for incoming TLS connections. If empty, TLS listener is disabled;
• --listen-tls-cert-file / FERRETDB_LISTEN_TLS_CERT_FILE specifies the PEM encoded, TLS certificate file that will be presented to clients;
• --listen-tls-key-file / FERRETDB_LISTEN_TLS_KEY_FILE specifies the TLS private key file that will be used to decrypt communications;
• --listen-tls-ca-file / FERRETDB_LISTEN_TLS_CA_FILE specifies the root CA certificate file that will be used to verify client certificates.

Then use tls query parameters in MongoDB URI for the client. You may also need to set tlsCAFile parameter if the system-wide certificate authority did not issue the server's certificate. See documentation for your client or driver for more details. Example: mongodb://ferretdb:27018/?tls=true&tlsCAFile=companyRootCA.pem.

Setting up TLS connections

In the following examples, FerretDB uses TLS certificates to secure the connection. The ferretdb server uses TLS server certificate file, TLS private key file and root CA certificate file.

server-certs/
├── rootCA-cert.pem
├── server-cert.pem
└── server-key.pem

The client uses TLS client certificate file and root CA certificate file.

client-certs/
├── client.pem
└── rootCA-cert.pem

Setting up TLS via Docker

When using Docker to run ferretdb server, the docker-compose.yml below shows how to set up TLS connections. The Docker host requires certificates server-certs directory, and volume is mounted from ./server-certs of Docker host to /etc/certs of Docker container.

services:
  postgres:
    image: ghcr.io/ferretdb/postgres-documentdb:16
    platform: linux/amd64
    environment:
      - POSTGRES_USER=username
      - POSTGRES_PASSWORD=password
      - POSTGRES_DB=postgres
    volumes:
      - ./data:/var/lib/postgresql/data

  ferretdb:
    image: ghcr.io/ferretdb/ferretdb:2
    restart: on-failure
    ports:
      - 27018:27018
    environment:
      - FERRETDB_POSTGRESQL_URL=postgres://username:password@localhost:5432/postgres
      - FERRETDB_LISTEN_TLS=:27018
      - FERRETDB_LISTEN_TLS_CERT_FILE=/etc/certs/server-cert.pem
      - FERRETDB_LISTEN_TLS_KEY_FILE=/etc/certs/server-key.pem
      - FERRETDB_LISTEN_TLS_CA_FILE=/etc/certs/rootCA-cert.pem
    volumes:
      - ./server-certs:/etc/certs

networks:
  default:
    name: ferretdb

To start ferretdb, run the following command:

docker compose up

In the following example, a client connects to MongoDB URI using TLS certificates as username. It uses Docker volume to mount ./clients-certs of Docker host to /clients Docker container.

Connect to ferretdb server using mongosh client:

docker run --rm -it \
  --network=ferretdb \
  --volume ./client-certs:/clients \
  --entrypoint=mongosh \
  mongo 'mongodb://username:password@host.docker.internal:27018/?tls=true&tlsCertificateKeyFile=/clients/client.pem&tlsCaFile=/clients/rootCA-cert.pem'