Chainguard Image for jmx-exporter-bitnami-fips

The jmx-exporter-bitnami-fips Chainguard Image is used to expose JVM metrics for Prometheus to consume, as a helper container in any Bitnami Helm chart that supports jmx metrics.

Chainguard Images are regularly-updated, minimal container images with low-to-zero CVEs.

Download this Image

This image is available on cgr.dev:

docker pull cgr.dev/ORGANIZATION/jmx-exporter-bitnami-fips:latest

Be sure to replace the ORGANIZATION placeholder with the name used for your organization's private repository within the Chainguard registry.

Compatibility Notes

This image is a FIPS version of the JMX Exporter image and requires specific keystore settings to ensure it functions in a FIPS compliant manner. Like the non-FIPS JMX exporter image, it is comparable to the Bitnami jmx-exporter iamge.

Getting Started

You can deploy this image using the Bitnami Kafka Helm chart by some overridden settings, as follows:

cat <<EOF > values.yaml
global:
  security:
    allowInsecureImages: true
image:
  registry: "cgr.dev/ORGANIZATION"
  repository: "kafka"
  tag: "latest"
externalAccess:
  image:
    registry: "cgr.dev/ORGANIZATION"
    repository: "kubectl-bitnami"
    tag: "latest"
metrics:
      jmx:
        enabled: "true"
        image:
          registry: "cgr.dev/ORGANIZATION"
          repository: "jmx-exporter-bitnami-fips"
          tag: "latest"
EOF
helm install kafka-jmx oci://registry-1.docker.io/bitnamicharts/kafka --values values.yaml

Enabling FIPS‑Compliant TLS for JMX Exporter Using BCFKS

This image can be configured to use a FIPS‑enabled keystore (BCFKS) for TLS on the JMX metrics endpoint.

Configuring JMX Exporter for TLS

In your Helm values (or custom ConfigMap), configure the JMX exporter to use TLS by referencing the keystore:

metrics:
  jmx:
    enabled: "true"
    image:
      registry: "cgr.dev"
      repository: "jmx-exporter-bitnami-fips"
      tag: "latest"
      pullPolicy: Always
    config: |
      sslKeyStore: "/tmp/jmx_exporter.bcfks"
      sslKeyStorePassword: "changeit"
      sslTrustStore: "/tmp/jmx_exporter.bcfks"
      sslTrustStorePassword: "changeit"
      lowercaseOutputName: true
      hostPort: "0.0.0.0:5556"
      rules:
        - pattern: ".*"
      httpServer:
        ssl:
          keyStore:
            filename: /tmp/jmx_exporter.bcfks
          certificate:
            alias: jmx-exporter

Patching the JMX Exporter Container

You need to ensure that the keystore is generated at container startup. To do this, you can patch the StatefulSet for the JMX exporter container so that it first runs the keytool command and then starts the exporter with the proper TLS flags. An example patch file (patch.yaml) might look like this:

spec:
  template:
    spec:
      containers:
      - name: jmx-exporter
        command: ["/bin/sh", "-c"]
        args:
          - |
            keytool -genkeypair -alias jmx-exporter \
              -keyalg RSA -keysize 2048 -storetype BCFKS \
              -keystore /tmp/jmx_exporter.bcfks -storepass changeit \
              -keypass changeit -dname "CN=localhost" -validity 365 && \
            java -cp "/usr/share/java/bouncycastle-fips/*" \
              -Djavax.net.ssl.trustStoreType=BCFKS \
              -Djavax.net.ssl.keyStoreType=BCFKS \
              -Djavax.net.ssl.trustStore=/tmp/jmx_exporter.bcfks \
              -Djavax.net.ssl.trustStorePassword=changeit \
              -Djavax.net.ssl.keyStore=/tmp/jmx_exporter.bcfks \
              -Djavax.net.ssl.keyStorePassword=changeit \
              -jar jmx_prometheus_standalone.jar 5556 /etc/jmx-kafka/jmx-kafka-prometheus.yml

After installing the Helm chart, you can apply this patch to your broker and controller StatefulSets:

kubectl patch sts/kafka-broker --patch-file patch.yaml
kubectl patch sts/kafka-controller --patch-file patch.yaml

Connecting to the TLS‑Enabled JMX Metrics Endpoint

Once deployed, verify that the JMX exporter is serving metrics over TLS on port 5556 by using a TLS client:

openssl s_client -connect 127.0.0.1:5556 -tls1_2

Or test with curl (ignoring certificate validation):

curl -sik https://<your-service>:5556/metrics

Contact Support

If you have a Zendesk account (typically set up for you by your Customer Success Manager) you can reach out to Chainguard's Customer Success team through our Zendesk portal.

What are Chainguard Images?

Chainguard Images are a collection of container images designed for security and minimalism.

Many Chainguard Images are distroless; they contain only an open-source application and its runtime dependencies. These images do not even contain a shell or package manager. Chainguard Images are built with Wolfi, our Linux undistro designed to produce container images that meet the requirements of a secure software supply chain.

The main features of Chainguard Images include:

• Minimal design, with no unnecessary software bloat
• Automated nightly builds to ensure Images are completely up-to-date and contain all available security patches
• High quality build-time SBOMs (software bills of materials) attesting the provenance of all artifacts within the Image
• Verifiable signatures provided by Sigstore
• Reproducible builds with Cosign and apko (read more about reproducibility)

-dev Variants

As mentioned previously, Chainguard’s distroless Images have no shell or package manager by default. This is great for security, but sometimes you need these things, especially in builder images. For those cases, most (but not all) Chainguard Images come paired with a -dev variant which does include a shell and package manager.

Although the -dev image variants have similar security features as their distroless versions, such as complete SBOMs and signatures, they feature additional software that is typically not necessary in production environments. The general recommendation is to use the -dev variants only to build the application and then copy all application artifacts into a distroless image, which will result in a final container image that has a minimal attack surface and won’t allow package installations or logins.

That being said, it’s worth noting that -dev variants of Chainguard Images are completely fine to run in production environments. After all, the -dev variants are still more secure than many popular container images based on fully-featured operating systems such as Debian and Ubuntu since they carry less software, follow a more frequent patch cadence, and offer attestations for what they include.

Learn More

To better understand how to work with Chainguard Images, we encourage you to visit Chainguard Academy, our documentation and education platform.