[Openstack] Federated Identity Management (bursting and zones)

Sandy Walsh sandy.walsh at rackspace.com
Mon Mar 28 14:15:29 UTC 2011


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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