[openstack-dev] [Keystone][Fernet] HA SQL backend for Fernet keys

Clint Byrum clint at fewbar.com
Mon Jul 27 19:03:24 UTC 2015


Excerpts from Dolph Mathews's message of 2015-07-27 11:48:12 -0700:
> On Mon, Jul 27, 2015 at 1:31 PM, Clint Byrum <clint at fewbar.com> wrote:
> 
> > Excerpts from Alexander Makarov's message of 2015-07-27 10:01:34 -0700:
> > > Greetings!
> > >
> > > I'd like to discuss pro's and contra's of having Fernet encryption keys
> > > stored in a database backend.
> > > The idea itself emerged during discussion about synchronizing rotated
> > keys
> > > in HA environment.
> > > Now Fernet keys are stored in the filesystem that has some availability
> > > issues in unstable cluster.
> > > OTOH, making SQL highly available is considered easier than that for a
> > > filesystem.
> > >
> >
> > I don't think HA is the root of the problem here. The problem is
> > synchronization. If I have 3 keystone servers (n+1), and I rotate keys on
> > them, I must very carefully restart them all at the exact right time to
> > make sure one of them doesn't issue a token which will not be validated
> > on another. This is quite a real possibility because the validation
> > will not come from the user, but from the service, so it's not like we
> > can use simple persistence rules. One would need a layer 7 capable load
> > balancer that can find the token ID and make sure it goes back to the
> > server that issued it.
> >
> 
> This is not true (or if it is, I'd love see a bug report). keystone-manage
> fernet_rotate uses a three phase rotation strategy (staged -> primary ->
> secondary) that allows you to distribute a staged key (used only for token
> validation) throughout your cluster before it becomes a primary key (used
> for token creation and validation) anywhere. Secondary keys are only used
> for token validation.
> 
> All you have to do is atomically replace the fernet key directory with a
> new key set.
> 
> You also don't have to restart keystone for it to pickup new keys dropped
> onto the filesystem beneath it.
> 

That's great news! Is this documented anywhere? I dug through the
operators guides, security guide, install guide, etc. Nothing described
this dance, which is impressive and should be written down!

I even tried to discern how it worked from the code but it actually
looks like it does not work the way you describe on casual investigation.



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