Overview
This is a repackaged open source software product wherein additional charges apply for hardening, security configuration, and setup support.
WHAT IS OPENBAO
OpenBao is an open-source secrets management platform, forked from HashiCorp Vault 1.14 and now hosted by the Linux Foundation. Written in Go and distributed as a single static binary, OpenBao gives applications and operators a central place to store, generate, and rotate secrets: static key-value secrets, dynamic database credentials, AWS/GCP/Azure cloud credentials, x509 certificates via the PKI engine, encryption-as-a-service through the transit engine, SSH certificate authorities, JWT/OIDC issuance, and TOTP. Identity is unified through pluggable auth methods - userpass, AppRole, JWT/OIDC, Kubernetes, LDAP, GitHub, AWS IAM, Azure, GCP - and access is gated by ACL policies against fine-grained paths. The Web UI ships built in. State is held in a pluggable storage backend: file, integrated raft, or external (S3, DynamoDB, Postgres, MySQL). MPL-2.0 license, fully auditable, no vendor lock-in.
WHAT THIS AMI ADDS
Security hardening:
- OpenBao listener bound to 127.0.0.1:8200 only - reachable from the network only through the Nginx reverse proxy on TCP 443 with TLS
- Auto-initialisation at first boot with 5 unseal key shares and a threshold of 3; the initial root token plus all 5 unseal keys are written to /root/openbao-credentials.txt (chmod 600 root-only)
- Auto-unseal on every reboot using a root-only cached subset of the unseal keys at /var/lib/openbao/.unseal-keys - operators do not have to SSH in and unseal manually after a reboot; a clear production-migration path is documented in the same credentials file (revoke root token, replace TLS cert, move to KMS or Transit auto-unseal, delete the on-disk cache)
- Nginx reverse proxy with TLS, HTTP-to-HTTPS redirect, security headers (X-Content-Type-Options, X-Frame-Options, Referrer-Policy), long-poll timeouts tuned for OpenBao's blocking events endpoint
- UFW firewall pre-configured - only TCP 22, 80, 443 are exposed; OpenBao on TCP 8200 stays loopback-only
- fail2ban, AppArmor
- CVE scan - every image is scanned for vulnerabilities before release
OS hardening (CIS Level 1):
- CIS Ubuntu 24.04 LTS Level 1 benchmark applied via ansible-lockdown
- auditd, SSH hardening, kernel hardening, IMDSv2 enforced
Compliance artifacts:
- SBOM - CycloneDX 1.6 at /etc/lynxroute/sbom.json
- CIS Conformance Report at /etc/lynxroute/cis-report.html
- CIS Tailored Profile at /usr/share/doc/lynxroute/CIS_TAILORED_PROFILE.md
ARCHITECTURE NOTES
Storage is the file backend at /opt/openbao/data, persisted across reboots. The seal type is shamir (default); we set the standard 5-key share / 3-key threshold. For production use the credentials file documents how to migrate to KMS (AWS/GCP/Azure) or Transit auto-unseal so the on-disk seal keys can be removed. OpenBao's own listener has tls_disable=true because Nginx terminates TLS - operators replace the self-signed certificate with a CA-signed one through certbot --nginx without restarting OpenBao (which would re-seal the store).
Highlights
- OpenBao security baked in: API on loopback (TCP 8200) behind Nginx with TLS, store auto-initialised at first boot with a 5-of-3 unseal share, root token plus all 5 unseal keys in a root-only credentials file, auto-unseal on every reboot from a root-only on-disk key cache.
Details
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Pricing
Free trial
Dimension | Cost/hour |
|---|---|
t3.medium Recommended | $0.05 |
m6i.large | $0.05 |
m6i.xlarge | $0.05 |
t3.large | $0.05 |
Vendor refund policy
We do not offer refunds for this product. AWS infrastructure charges (EC2, EBS, data transfer) are billed separately by AWS and are not refundable by us.
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Delivery details
64-bit (x86) Amazon Machine Image (AMI)
Amazon Machine Image (AMI)
An AMI is a virtual image that provides the information required to launch an instance. Amazon EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud) instances are virtual servers on which you can run your applications and workloads, offering varying combinations of CPU, memory, storage, and networking resources. You can launch as many instances from as many different AMIs as you need.
Version release notes
OpenBao 2.7.1
- OpenBao updated 2.6.2 -> 2.7.1. MPL-2.0 unchanged
- Storage now uses the PebbleDB backend at /opt/openbao/data because OpenBao 2.7 removed the file backend; data from an existing 2.6 file-backend server must be converted with bao operator migrate before upgrading it
- Security: 14 advisories fixed across 2.7.0 and 2.7.1, including cross-namespace policy cache traversal, AppRole Secret IDs usable after expiry, Kubernetes service-account tokens accepted after revocation, and non-validated names issued through ACME
- New: post-quantum ML-DSA signatures in the PKI and Transit engines, post-quantum TLS key exchange on listeners, and KMS-backed external keys for PKI and Transit
- The LDAP, Kerberos and RADIUS auth methods, the LDAP secrets engine and the cloud KMS auto-unseal seals now ship as separate OpenBao plugins; the KV secrets engine stays enabled at secret/
- Certbot pre-installed - enable a trusted HTTPS certificate with one command: sudo certbot --nginx -d yourdomain.com
- Rebuilt on the current CIS Level 1 hardened Ubuntu 24.04 LTS base for the latest Ubuntu security updates
Additional details
Usage instructions
- Launch instance (t3.small minimum, t3.medium recommended)
- Open Security Group - allow TCP 443 from your IP
- SSH: ssh -i key.pem ubuntu@<PUBLIC_IP>
- Read credentials: sudo cat /root/openbao-credentials.txt
- Open https://<PUBLIC_IP>/ - accept the self-signed certificate warning
- Sign in with the initial root token from the credentials file
- In the UI, create AppRole or userpass auth, issue limited-scope tokens, and rotate the root token
The 5 unseal keys and initial root token are stored in /root/openbao-credentials.txt at first boot. OpenBao auto-unseals at every reboot using keys cached at /var/lib/openbao/.unseal-keys (chmod 600).
Production checklist:
- Revoke the initial root token after creating scoped tokens: bao token revoke <root-token>
- Replace the self-signed TLS certificate: sudo certbot --nginx -d YOUR_DOMAIN
- Migrate from local-disk seal-key cache to KMS or Transit auto-unseal, then delete /var/lib/openbao/.unseal-keys
- Enable audit devices (file or syslog)
CLI quickstart on the instance: export BAO_ADDR=http://127.0.0.1:8200 export BAO_TOKEN=<root-token-from-credentials-file> bao secrets enable -path=secret kv-v2 bao kv put secret/hello message=world bao kv get secret/hello
Resources
Vendor resources
Support
Vendor support
Visit us online: https://lynxroute.com
For OpenBao documentation: https://openbao.org/docs/ For OpenBao upstream issues: https://github.com/openbao/openbao/issues For AWS infrastructure issues:
AWS infrastructure support
AWS Support is a one-on-one, fast-response support channel that is staffed 24x7x365 with experienced and technical support engineers. The service helps customers of all sizes and technical abilities to successfully utilize the products and features provided by Amazon Web Services.