Openshift Metrics developer here.

Sorry if the docs were not clear enough.

The route is used to expose Hawkular Metrics, particularly to the browser running the OpenShift console.

If you don't specify any certificates, the system will use a self signed certificate instead. The browser will complain that this self signed certificate is not trusted, but you can usually just click through to accept it anyways. If you are ok with this, then you don't need to do any extra steps.

If you want the browser to trust this connection by default, then you will need to provide your own certificates signed by a trusted certificate authority. This is exactly similar to how you would have to generate your own certificate if you are running a normal site under https.

From the following command:

$ oc create route reencrypt hawkular-metrics-reencrypt \ --hostname hawkular-metrics.example.com \ --key /path/to/key \ --cert /path/to/cert \ --ca-cert /path/to/ca.crt \ --service hawkular-metrics --dest-ca-cert /path/to/internal-ca.crt

'cert' corresponds to your certificate signed by the certificate authority

'key' corresponds to the key for your certificate

'ca-cert' corresponds to the certificate authorities certificate

'dest-ca-cert' corresponds to the certificate authority which signed the self signed certificate generated by the metrics deployer

The docs https://docs.openshift.com/enterprise/3.2/install_config/cluster_metrics.html#metrics-reencrypting-route should explain how to get the dest-ca-cert from the system

First of all and as far as I know, note that using a re-encrypting route is optional. The documentation mentions deploying without importing any certificate:

oc secrets new metrics-deployer nothing=/dev/null

And you should be able to start with that and make hawkular working (for instance you'll be able to curl with '-k' option). But re-encrypting route is sometimes necessary, some clients refuse to communicate with untrusted certificates.

This page explains what are the certificates needed here: https://docs.openshift.com/enterprise/3.1/install_config/cluster_metrics.html#metrics-reencrypting-route

Note that you can also configure it from the web console if you find it more convenient: from https://(your_openshift_host)/console/project/openshift-infra/browse/routes , you can create a new route and upload the certificate files from that page. Under "TLS termination" select "Re-Encrypt", then provide the 4 certificate files.

If you don't know how to generate self-signed certificates you can follow steps described here: https://datacenteroverlords.com/2012/03/01/creating-your-own-ssl-certificate-authority/ . You'll end up with a rootCA.pem file (use it for "CA Certificate"), a device.key file (or name it hawkular.key, and upload it as private key) and a device.crt file (you can name it hawkular.pem, it's the PEM format certificate). When asked for the Common Name, make sure to enter the hostname for your hawkular server, like "hawkular-metrics.example.com"

The final one to provide is the current self-signed certificate used by Hawkular, under so-called "Destination CA Certificate". OpenShift documentation explains how to get it: run

base64 -d <<< \
`oc get -o yaml secrets hawkular-metrics-certificate \
| grep -i hawkular-metrics-ca.certificate | awk '{print $2}'`

and, if you're using the web console, save it to a file then upload it under Destination CA Certificate.

Now you should be done with re-encrypting.