Configuring Email Support

The Cortex Helm Chart needs to be configured against an SMTP server to send emails for notifications, inviting users, password changes, and tenant registrations on behalf of a specified user.

Google/Gmail's SMTP server

By default the deployment is configured against Google's SMTP server and only the email,password, and from values under cortex.smtp needed to be provided when installed via helm.

The following is the default configuration packaged with the helm chart,

cortex:
  smtp:
    # A VALID EMAIL AND PASSWORD MUST BE PROVIDED TO RECEIVE INVITATION EMAILS
    # cortex.smtp.email: The email used to send invitation/notification emails to users
    email: 'dev@gmail.com'
    # cortex.smtp.password: The password for the cortex.smtp.email account
    password: ''
    # cortex.smtp.port: The port on the SMTP server listening to traffic
    port: 465
    # cortex.smtp.from: The FROM header on notification emails
    from: 'Dev User <dev@gmail.com>'
    # cortex.smtp.host: The SMTP server to use for sending emails
    host: 'smtp.gmail.com'

Optional override

You can optionally override the default SMTP settings. With the Cortex Helm Chart, you have the ability to specify an optional accounts.nodemailerConfigMap value override with the name of a kubernetes ConfigMap that contains a json document of the smtp configuration options set for the Nodemailer's transport.

Nodemailer configuration via configMap

1. Create a JSON document with the Nodemailer SMTP override settings.

   cat << EOM > nodemailer.json
   {
    "host": "test.mailu.io",
    "secure": false,
    "port": 587,
    "auth": {
       "user": "admin@test.mailu.io",
       "pass": "letmein"
    }
   }
   EOM

2. Create a ConfigMap cortex-accounts-nodemailer in the cortex namespace from the JSON file, with file key being nodemailer.json. NOTE: --from-file=nodemailer.json=nodemailer.json ensures the key is nodemailer.json, otherwise the pod will not start correctly.

   ```
   kubectl create configmap -n cortex cortex-accounts-nodemailer --from-file=nodemailer.json
   ```

3. Set the helm values override accounts.nodemailerConfigMap to make the accounts service load the nodemailer configMap.

   helm install|upgrade ... --set accounts.nodemailerConfigMap=cortex-accounts-nodemailer