Request Syntax URI Request Parameters Request Body Response Syntax Response Elements Errors Examples See Also

DescribeCertificateAuthority

Returns detailed information about a certificate authority (CA) in your cluster, including its validity period, signing and distribution status, provenance, scheduled auto-activation events, and public certificate data.

Request Syntax


GET /clusters/name/certificate-authorities/certificateAuthorityId HTTP/1.1

URI Request Parameters

The request uses the following URI parameters.

certificateAuthorityId

The ID of the certificate authority to describe.

Required: Yes

name

The name of your cluster.

Required: Yes

Request Body

The request does not have a request body.

Response Syntax


HTTP/1.1 200
Content-type: application/json

{
   "certificateAuthority": { 
      "activatedAt": number,
      "activatedBy": "string",
      "createdAt": number,
      "createdBy": "string",
      "data": "string",
      "distributionStatus": "string",
      "id": "string",
      "rollbackAvailable": boolean,
      "scheduledEvents": { 
         "finalAutoActivation": number,
         "firstAutoActivation": number
      },
      "signingStatus": "string",
      "validity": { 
         "notAfter": number,
         "notBefore": number
      }
   }
}

Response Elements

If the action is successful, the service sends back an HTTP 200 response.

The following data is returned in JSON format by the service.

certificateAuthority

An object containing detailed information about the certificate authority.

Type: CertificateAuthority object

Errors

For information about the errors that are common to all actions, see Common Errors.

ResourceNotFoundException

The specified resource could not be found. You can view your available clusters with ListClusters. You can view your available managed node groups with ListNodegroups. Amazon EKS clusters and node groups are AWS Region specific.

addonName: The Amazon EKS add-on name associated with the exception.
clusterName: The Amazon EKS cluster associated with the exception.
fargateProfileName: The Fargate profile associated with the exception.
message: The Amazon EKS message associated with the exception.
nodegroupName: The Amazon EKS managed node group associated with the exception.
subscriptionId: The Amazon EKS subscription ID with the exception.

HTTP Status Code: 404

ServerException

These errors are usually caused by a server-side issue.

addonName: The Amazon EKS add-on name associated with the exception.
clusterName: The Amazon EKS cluster associated with the exception.
message: These errors are usually caused by a server-side issue.
nodegroupName: The Amazon EKS managed node group associated with the exception.
subscriptionId: The Amazon EKS subscription ID with the exception.

HTTP Status Code: 500

ServiceUnavailableException

The service is unavailable. Back off and retry the operation.

message: The request has failed due to a temporary failure of the server.

HTTP Status Code: 503

Examples

In the following example or examples, the Authorization header contents (AUTHPARAMS) must be replaced with an AWS Signature Version 4 signature. For more information about creating these signatures, see Signature Version 4 Signing Process in the Amazon EKS General Reference.

You need to learn how to sign HTTP requests only if you intend to manually create them. When you use the AWS Command Line Interface (AWS CLI) or one of the AWS SDKs to make requests to AWS, these tools automatically sign the requests for you with the access key that you specify when you configure the tools. When you use these tools, you don't need to learn how to sign requests yourself.

Example

The following example describes the certificate authority with the ID b2c3d4e5-6789-0abc-def0-1234567890ab for the cluster named my-cluster.

Sample Request


GET /clusters/my-cluster/certificate-authorities/b2c3d4e5-6789-0abc-def0-1234567890ab HTTP/1.1
Host: eks.us-west-2.amazonaws.com
Accept-Encoding: identity
User-Agent: aws-cli/2.9.0 Python/3.9.11 Windows/10 exe/AMD64 prompt/off command/eks.describe-certificate-authority
X-Amz-Date: 20260729T193227Z
Authorization: AUTHPARAMS

Sample Response


HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Date: Wed, 29 Jul 2026 19:32:43 GMT
Content-Type: application/json
x-amzn-RequestId: xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxx
X-Amzn-Trace-Id: Root=1-xxxxxxxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Connection: keep-alive

{
	"certificateAuthority": {
		"id": "b2c3d4e5-6789-0abc-def0-1234567890ab",
		"createdAt": 1785312515.848,
		"createdBy": "CUSTOMER",
		"signingStatus": "NOT_USED",
		"distributionStatus": "COMPLETE",
		"validity": {
			"notBefore": 1785312515.848,
			"notAfter": 1816848515.848
		},
		"scheduledEvents": {
			"firstAutoActivation": 1801080515.848,
			"finalAutoActivation": 1812960515.848
		},
		"rollbackAvailable": false,
		"data": "LS0tLS1CRUdJTiBDRVJUSUZJQ0FURS0tLS0t...LS0tLS1FTkQgQ0VSVElGSUNBVEUtLS0tLQ=="
	}
}