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Manage Custom Roles

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Roles grant users access to MongoDB resources. By default, MongoDB provides some built-in roles, but if these roles cannot describe a desired privilege set, you can create custom roles.

When you create a role, you specify the database to which it applies. Ops Manager stores your custom roles on all MongoDB instances in your Ops Manager project but uniquely identifies a role by the combination of the database name and role name. If a database with that name exists on multiple deployments within your Ops Manager project, the role applies to each of those databases. If you create a role on the admin database, the role applies to all admin databases in the deployment.

Roles consist of privileges that grant access to specific actions on specific resources. On most databases, a resource is the database or a collection, but on the admin database a resource can be all databases, all collections with a given name across databases, or all deployments.

A role can inherit privileges from other roles in its database. A role on the admin database can inherit privileges from roles in other databases.

MongoDB roles are separate from Ops Manager roles.

Considerations

Managed Users and Roles

Any users or roles you choose to manage in an Ops Manager project have their Synced value set to Yes and are synced to all deployments in the project.

Any users or roles you do not choose to manage in an Ops Manager project have their Synced value set to No and exist only in their respective MongoDB deployments.

Note

If you toggle Synced to OFF after import, any users or roles you create are deleted.

Consistent Users and Roles

If you enforce a consistent set of users and roles in your project, Ops Manager synchronizes these users and roles across all deployments in that project. Toggle Enforce Consistent Set to choose whether or not to manage one set of users and roles:

Enforce Consistent Set is YES

In a managed project, Ops Manager grants all of the users and roles access to all deployments. All deployments that the Ops Manager project manages have the same set of MongoDB users and roles.

Ops Manager limits the access to users and roles where you set Synced to Yes. Ops Manager deletes all users and roles that Ops Manager project doesn’t manage from the deployments in your project.

Enforce Consistent Set is NO

In a managed project, Ops Manager allows each deployment to use its own set of MongoDB users and roles. Ops Manager doesn’t need to manage these MongoDB users and roles. To manage these users and roles, you must connect direct to the MongoDB deployment.

Ops Manager grants managed MongoDB users and roles where you set Synced to Yes access to all managed deployments.

Ops Manager limits access of unmanaged MongoDB users and roles, where you set Synced to No, to those users’ and roles’ specific deployments.

Note

Enforce Consistent Set defaults to NO.

To learn how importing MongoDB deployments can affect managing users and roles, see Automation and Updated Security Settings Upon Import.

Prerequisite

MongoDB access control must be enabled to apply roles. You can create roles before enabling accessing control or after, but they don’t go into effect until you enable access control.

Create a Custom MongoDB Role

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2

Click Add New Role.

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In the Identifier field, enter the database on which to define the role and enter a name for the role.

A role applies to the database on which it is defined and can grant access down to the collection level. The combination of the role name and its database uniquely identify that role. Complete the Identifier fields to meet the authentication and authorization methods you use:

  • If you use neither LDAP authentication nor authorization, type the database name in the database Identifier field and the name you want for the role in the name Identifier field.

  • If you use LDAP authentication, but not LDAP authorization, type $external in the database Identifier field and the name you want for the role in the name Identifier field.

  • If you use any authentication method with LDAP Authorization, type admin in the database Identifier field and the LDAP Group DN in the name Identifier field.

    Example

    In your LDAP server, you created an LDAP Group with a Distinguished Name of CN=DBA,CN=Users,DC=example,DC=com. If you want to create a DBA role in Ops Manager linked to this LDAP Group, type admin in the database Identifier field and CN=DBA,CN=Users,DC=example,DC=com in the name Identifier field.

4

Select the privileges to grant the new role.

You can grant privileges in two ways:

Give a role the privileges of another role.

To grant a new role all the privileges of one or more existing roles, select the roles in the Inherits From field. The field provides a drop-down list that includes both MongoDB built-in roles and any custom roles you have already created.

Add a privilege directly.

To grant specific privileges to the role, click ADD PRIVILEGES FOR A RESOURCE.

In the Resource field, specify the resource to which to apply the role. Select the database from the drop-down menu. To specify the whole database, leave the field blank. To specify a collection, enter the collection name. If the resource is on the admin database, you can click ADMIN and apply the role outside the admin database.

In the Available Privileges section, select the actions to apply. For a description of each action, see Privilege Actions in the MongoDB manual.

5

Click Add Privileges.

6

Click Add Role.

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Click Review & Deploy to review your changes.

8

Click Confirm & Deploy to deploy your changes.

Otherwise, click Cancel and you can make additional changes.

Edit a Custom Role

You can change a custom role’s privileges. You cannot change its name or database.

1

Navigate to the MongoDB Roles tab for your deployment.

  1. If it is not already displayed, select the organization that contains your desired project from the office icon 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.
  4. Click the Security tab.
  5. Click MongoDB Roles.
2

Click Edit next to the role you want to modify.

3

Add or Remove privileges for that role.

You can grant privileges in two ways:

Give a role the privileges of another role.

To grant a new role all the privileges of one or more existing roles, select the roles in the Inherits From field. The field provides a drop-down list that includes both MongoDB built-in roles and any custom roles you have already created.

Add a privilege directly.

To grant specific privileges to the role, click ADD PRIVILEGES FOR A RESOURCE.

In the Resource field, specify the resource to which to apply the role. Select the database from the drop-down menu. To specify the whole database, leave the field blank. To specify a collection, enter the collection name. If the resource is on the admin database, you can click ADMIN and apply the role outside the admin database.

In the Available Privileges section, select the actions to apply. For a description of each action, see Privilege Actions in the MongoDB manual.

To remove an inherited role, click the x next to the role. To remove a privilege, click the trash icon next to the privilege.

4

Click Save Changes.

5

Click Review & Deploy to review your changes.

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Click Confirm & Deploy to deploy your changes.

Otherwise, click Cancel and you can make additional changes.

View Privileges for a Role

To view a role’s privileges, click Deployment, then the Security tab, then Roles, then view privileges next to the role.

Each privilege pairs a resource with a set of Privilege Actions. All roles are assigned a database. Each built-in role is assigned to either admin database or every database.

Remove a Custom Role

1

Navigate to the MongoDB Roles tab for your deployment.

  1. If it is not already displayed, select the organization that contains your desired project from the office icon 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.
  4. Click the Security tab.
  5. Click MongoDB Roles.
2

Set the Synced value to No next to the role that you want to delete.

3

Click Unsync to verify.

4

Click Review & Deploy to review your changes.

5

Click Confirm & Deploy to deploy your changes.

Note

If Enforce Consistent Set is set to Yes, the custom role is also removed from managed MongoDB processes. If Enforce Consistent Set is set to No, you must manually remove the role with the dropRole command.

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