[openstack-dev] [Tripleo] X509 Management

Adam Young ayoung at redhat.com
Tue Jun 21 14:39:09 UTC 2016


When deploying the overcloud with TLS, the current "no additional 
technology" approach is to use opensssl and self signed.  While this 
works for a Proof of concept, it does not make sense if the users need 
to access the resources from remote systems.

It seems to me that the undercloud, as the system of record for 
deploying the overcloud, should be responsible for centralizing the 
signing of certificates.

When deploying a service, the puppet module sure trigger a getcert call, 
which registers the cert with  Certmonger.  Certmonger is responsible 
for making sure the CSR gets to the signing authority, and fetching the 
cert.

Certmonger works via helper apps.  While there is currently a "self 
signed" helper, this does not do much if two or more systems need to 
have the same CA sign their certs.

It would be fairly simple to write a certmonger helper program that 
sends a CSR from a controller or compute node to the undercloud, has the 
Heat instance on the undercloud validate the request, and then pass it 
on to the signing application.

I'm not really too clear on how callbacks are  done from the 
os-collect-config processes to Heat, but I am guessing it is some form 
of Rest API that could be reused for this work flow?


I would see this as the lowest level of deployment.  We can make use of 
Anchor or Dogtag helper apps already.  This might also prove a decent 
middleground for people that need an automated approach to tie in with a 
third party CA, where they need some confirmation from the deployment 
process that the data in the CSR is valid and should be signed.



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