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Secure MongoDB Deployments with Authentication

Enable Kerberos Authentication for your Ops Manager Project

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  • Overview
  • Considerations
  • Procedures

Overview

Ops Manager enables you to configure the Authentication Mechanisms that all clients, including the Ops Manager Agents, use to connect to your MongoDB deployments. You can enable multiple authentication mechanisms for each of your projects, but you must choose only one mechanism for the Agents.

MongoDB Enterprise supports authentication using a Kerberos service. Kerberos is an industry standard authentication protocol for large client/server systems.

Important

Setting up and configuring a Kerberos deployment is beyond the scope of this document. This tutorial assumes you have configured a Kerberos principal for each Agent and you have a valid keytab file for each Agent.

To authenticate MongoDB with Kerberos, you must:

  1. Have a properly configured Kerberos deployment,

  2. Configure Kerberos service principals for MongoDB, and

  3. Add the Kerberos user principals for the Agents.

The Kerberos Authentication section of the MongoDB Manual provides more detail about using MongoDB with Kerberos.

Considerations

Kerberos (GSSAPI) is only available on MongoDB Enterprise builds. If you have existing deployments running on a MongoDB Community build, you must upgrade them to MongoDB Enterprise before you can enable Kerberos (GSSAPI) for your Ops Manager project.

This tutorial describes how to enable Kerberos for one of your Ops Manager projects and how to configure your Ops Manager Agents to connect to your Kerberos-enabled deployment.

Note

If you want to reset Authentication and TLS settings for your project, first unmanage any MongoDB deployments that Ops Manager manages in your project.

Procedures

These procedures describe how to configure and enable Kerberos authentication when using Automation. If Ops Manager does not manage your Monitoring or Backups, you must manually configure them to authenticate using Kerberos.

See Configure the MongoDB Agent for Kerberos for instructions.

Configure an Existing Linux Deployment for Kerberos-based Authentication

If you use Ops Manager to manage existing deployments on Linux in your project, all MongoDB deployments in the project must be configured for Kerberos authentication before you can enable Kerberos authentication for your project.

1

Navigate to the Clusters view for your deployment.

  1. If it is not already displayed, select the organization that contains your desired project from the Organizations menu in the navigation bar.

  2. If it is not already displayed, select your desired project from the Projects menu in the navigation bar.

  3. If it is not already displayed, click Deployment in the sidebar.

  1. Click the Clusters view.

2

On the line listing the process, click Modify.

3

Expand the Advanced Configuration Options section.

4

Set the kerberosKeytab option.

If kerberosKeytab is not already set:

  1. Click Add Option.

  2. Expand the Select a Startup Option list.

  3. Search for and select the kerberosKeytab option, then click Add.

  4. In the kerberosKeytab column, provide the absolute path to the keytab file.

  5. Click Save.

When you have configured the Kerberos options for each deployment, you can proceed to enable Kerberos for your Ops Manager project.

Enable Kerberos for your Ops Manager Project

1

Navigate to the Security Settings dialog for your deployment.

  1. If it is not already displayed, select the organization that contains your desired project from the Organizations menu in the navigation bar.

  2. If it is not already displayed, select your desired project from the Projects menu in the navigation bar.

  3. If it is not already displayed, click Deployment in the sidebar.

  1. Click the Security tab.

  2. Click the Settings tab.

  3. Perform one of the following actions:

    • If this is your first time configuring TLS, authentication, or authorization settings for this project, click Get Started.

    • If you have already configured TLS authentication, or authorization settings for this project, click Edit.

2

Optional: Specify the TLS Settings.

Field
Action
MongoDB Deployment Transport Layer Security (TLS)
Toggle this slider to ON.
TLS CA File Path

The TLS Certificate Authority file is a .pem-format certificate file that contains the root certificate chain from the Certificate Authority. The MongoDB Agent uses this same Certificate Authority file to connect to every item in your deployment.

The encrypted private key for the .pem certificate file must be in PKCS #1 format. The MongoDB Agent doesn't support the PKCS #8 format.

Type the file path to the TLS Certificate Authority file on every host running a MongoDB process:

  • Type the file path on all Linux hosts in the first box.

  • Type the file path on all Windows hosts in the second box.

This enables the net.tls.CAFile setting for the MongoDB processes in the project.

Click Validate to test that each host in your deployment has a TLS Certificate Authority at the paths you specified.

Cluster TLS CA File Path

The .pem file that contains the root certificate chain from the Certificate Authority used to validate the certificate presented by a client establishing a connection. Specify the file name of the .pem file using relative or absolute paths. net.tls.clusterCAFile requires that net.tls.CAFile is set.

If you do not specify the net.tls.clusterCAFile, the cluster uses the .pem file specified in the net.tls.CAFile option.

net.tls.clusterCAFile lets you use separate Certificate Authorities to verify the client-to-server and server-to-client portions of the TLS handshake.

Client Certificate Mode

Select if client applications or MongoDB Agents must present a TLS certificate when connecting to a TLS-enabled MongoDB deployments. Each MongoDB deployment checks for certificates from these client hosts when they try to connect. If you choose to require the client TLS certificates, make sure they are valid.

Accepted values are:

Optional
Every client may present a valid TLS certificate when connecting to MongoDB deployments. MongoDB Agents might use TLS certificates if you don't set the mongod tlsMode to None.
Required
Every MongoDB deployment in this project starts with TLS-encrypted network connections. All Agents must use TLS to connect to any MongoDB deployment.

TLS is not required for use with Kerberos (GSSAPI) authentication.

3

Choose the authentication mechanism.

  1. In the MongoDB Agent Connections to Deployment section, select Kerberos (GSSAPI).

  2. Input your SASL Service Name.

    The SASL Service Name is the Kerberos Service Principal Name for mongod or mongos.

Important

If you are not using LDAP authorization, you must add users to the $external database in your MongoDB deployment. For an example, see Kerberos Authentication.

4

Configure the LDAP Authorization Settings.

Important

Starting with MongoDB 3.4, you can authenticate users using LDAP, Kerberos, and X.509 certificates without requiring local user documents in the $external database as long as you enable LDAP authorization first. When such a user successfully authenticates, MongoDB performs a query against the LDAP server to retrieve all groups which that LDAP user possesses and transforms those groups into their equivalent MongoDB roles.

Skip this step if you don't want to enable LDAP authorization.

  1. Enter values for the following fields:

    Setting
    Value
    LDAP Authorization
    Toggle to ON to enable LDAP authorization.
    Authorization Query Template
    Specify a template for an LDAP query URL to retrieve a list of LDAP groups for an LDAP user.
5

Configure Kerberos (GSSAPI) for the Agents.

You can enable more than one authentication mechanism for your MongoDB deployment, but the Ops Manager Agents can only use one authentication mechanism. Select Kerberos (GSSAPI) to connect to your MongoDB deployment.

  1. Select the Kerberos (GSSAPI) option from the Agent Auth Mechanism section.

  2. Provide credentials for the MongoDB Agent:

    If using Linux, configure:

    Setting
    Value
    MongoDB Agent Kerberos Principal
    The Kerberos Principal.
    MongoDB Agent Keytab Path
    The path for the Agent's Keytab.

    If using Windows, configure:

    Setting
    Value
    MongoDB Agent Username
    The Active Directory user name.
    MongoDB Agent Password
    The Active Directory password.
    Domain
    The NetBIOS name of a domain in Active Directory Domain Services. Must be in all capital letters.
6

Click Save Settings.

7

Click Review & Deploy to review your changes.

8

Click Confirm & Deploy to deploy your changes.

Otherwise, click Cancel and you can make additional changes.

9

Create MongoDB Roles for LDAP Groups. (Optional)

After enabling LDAP Authorization, you need to create custom MongoDB roles for each LDAP Group you specified for LDAP Authorization.

Back

Enable LDAP Authentication

Next

Enable OIDC Authentication