Skip to content

Authentication and Authorization

You must configure how users and operators will authenticate against the various services provided by Understack. At this time Dex IdP is used for all the services and a connector must be configured to provide authentication.

Warning

Unfortunately we need to use the domain ID (UUID) and not the domain name in the Dex configuration. This is not known before hand. So at this time you must copy the config.connectors section from values-generic.yaml or values-azure.yaml into ${DEPLOY_NAME}/helm-configs/dexidp.yaml and change the value of the domain key in the keystone_internal section to the UUID of the operator domain.

User Authentication

Azure OIDC

To use Azure OIDC support you must first create an Azure Entra Application Registration and configure it for OIDC authentication.

Azure App Registration

  1. From the Azure Entra > App registrations menu, choose New registration.
  2. Enter a Name for the application (e.g. Undercloud).
  3. Specify who can use the application (e.g. Accounts in this organizational directory only).
  4. Enter Redirect URI as follows (making sure to replace ${DNS_ZONE}), then choose Add. Platform: Web Redirect URI: https://dex.${DNS_ZONE}/callback

You will then make a note of the following pieces of information for your application:

  • Application ID or Client ID (same value, two different names) we'll call this {client_id}.
  • Directory ID or Tenant ID (same value, two different names) we'll call this {tenant_id}.

Azure App Secret

  1. From the Certificates & secrets menu, choose New client secret
  2. Enter a Name for the secret (e.g. Undercloud-SSO).
  3. Copy and save this value and we'll use it for the {client_secret}.

Azure Dex Configuration

In ${DEPLOY_NAME}/helm-configs/dexidp.yaml under the valuesFiles key add $values/components/dexidp/values-azure.yaml beneath values-generic.yaml like:

${DEPLOY_NAME}/helm-configs/dexidp.yaml
spec:
  sources:
    - chart: dex
      # context omitted
      helm:
        # context omitted
        valuesFiles:
            - $understack/components/dexidp/values-generic.yaml
            - $understack/components/dexidp/values-azure.yaml
            - $deploy/YOUR_CLUSTER/helm-configs/dexidp.yaml
# rest omitted

Then create a secret like:

kubectl --namespace dex \
    create secret generic oidc-sso --dry-run=client \
    --from-literal=issuer=https://login.microsoftonline.com/{tenant_id}/v2.0 \
    --from-literal=client-id={client_id} \
    --from-literal=client-secret={client_secret} \
    --from-literal=redirect-uri=https://dex.${DNS_ZONE}/callback \
    -o yaml > ${UC_DEPLOY}/${DEPLOY_NAME}/manifests/secret-oidc-sso-dex.yaml

You must remember to add this secret to your secret storage (e.g. for Kube Seal you must commit the sealed file to your ${UC_DEPLOY} repo).

Static Users

Users can be created in OpenStack Keystone in the operator domain for testing purposes.

User Authorization

Once users can authenticate to the system, they must be granted authorization to different parts of the system. The default groups through the system are:

  • ucadmin - administrator of the system
  • dctech - DC Tech with access to physical systems
  • neteng - Network Engineer with access to IPAM and Network configuration
  • user - consumer of resources and hardware provided by the system

Nautobot

To customize the administrator group set the following in your ${DEPLOY_NAME}/helm-configs/nautobot.yaml

${DEPLOY_NAME}/helm-configs/nautobot.yaml
nautobot:
  extraEnvVars:
    # ignoring existing values here, don't remove
    - name: DEX_SUPERUSER_GROUPS
      value: your-admin-group