Details
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Epic
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Status: Open
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Major
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Resolution: Unresolved
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2.1.0, 2.2.0
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None
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Improve Ambari user management for supporting large enterprise
Description
Currently, Ambari user authentication is done via 2 modes:
1. Ambari defined users (not necessarily local OS users)
2. LDAP users whose group and users have to be imported into Ambari
In both cases, Ambari predefines the "admin" user that has admin role which is used for managing Ambari cluster and Ambari users. Furthermore, Ambari maintains a separate user database independent of any other user directory such as the /etc/passwd file. Even with LDAP integration, Ambari requires synching with the LDAP server users into Ambari's database. Ambari's maintenance of this private user database is problematic especially in a large enterprise environment where user management is often done thru group membership as employees change roles frequently.
In this JIRA, we propose a two-pronged approach to simplify and enable enterprise class authentication support in Ambari. In this proposal, Ambari will provide support for PAM authentication, and in this PAM mode, it will no longer track individual Ambari users in its own database. Ambari will only track groups and manage access control by granting access to groups. When a user attemp to log in, Ambari will authenticate the user via PAM. Once authenticated, it will determine the group(s) that the user belong thru. It then grants user permission based on the group information retrieved from PAM.
With PAM, LDAP can also be enabled via PAM-LDAP and customer will no longer need to perform any synching action.