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Re: Federated Identity Management (bursting and zones)

 

I personally think that having an external Identity Management solution is
the best option. In my mind there are vare valuable benefits for having a
highly scalable, enterprise class, identity management solution on OpenStack
such as (1) Separation of concerns of Authentication and Authorization from
the core OpenStack services and (2) Providing a unified authentication and
user management system for OpenStack services (i.e. Swift, Nova, Glance,
..etc.).

I think this is worthy of a summit discussion.

Thanks,
Khaled

On Mon, Mar 28, 2011 at 10:27 AM, <ksankar@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> Couple of quick thoughts:
>
> IMHO, -2. Rely on external system- is the best solution. This enables the
> decoupling of authorization, which then can be extended or integrated with
> existing systems, as appropriate by Openstack deployments. This also can be
> an instance of a federated identity management.
>
> -1.Replicated user accounts- is the worst as it can create sync problems.
>
> Cheers
> <k/>
>
>  -------- Original Message --------
> Subject: [Openstack] Federated Identity Management (bursting and zones)
> From: Sandy Walsh <sandy.walsh@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Date: Mon, March 28, 2011 7:15 am
> To: "openstack@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx" <openstack@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>
>  Currently, we link Nova deployments (aka Zones) with a single admin
> account. All operations done in the child zone are done with this admin
> account.
>
>  Obviously this needs to change. A simple operation such as
> "get_all_servers" should only return the servers that User X owns. In the
> current implementation, all the servers the admin account can see will be
> returned.
>
>  We need some form of federated identity management. User accounts must be
> shared between homogeneous and heterogeneous deployments. ie. all private,
> all public or public/private (aka Hybrid) via Bursting.
>
>  There are some possibilities here:
>
>  1. Replicate User accounts across zones. A user account would map to N
> child zone accounts ... one for each child zone. These "placeholder"
> accounts are hidden from the user and synchronized when the parent changes.
>
>  2. Rely on an external/shared user management service. Let the Auth/RBAC
> system sort out visibility, control, etc. This system would need to be
> publicly available to both groups in the hybrid scenario.
>
>  3. Continue with the admin account and filter access control/visibility
> in the parent zone.
>
>  ... and I'm sure there are others.
>
>  Nasty problem. Lots of issues and concerns with each approach.
>
>  Is there anyone actively working on this who can share some info?
> What is the currently sentiment in terms of an approach?
>
>  Summit discussion?
>
>  Thanks,
> Sandy
>
>
>
>  PS> I did some scanning of the BP's and don't see anything directly
> addressing this.
> https://blueprints.launchpad.net/nova/+spec/bursting
> https://blueprints.launchpad.net/nova/+spec/authentication-consistency
> https://blueprints.launchpad.net/nova/+spec/bexar-auth-manager-api
>
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