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Security in Ganeti
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~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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Ganeti was developed to run on internal, trusted systems. As such, the
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security model is all-or-nothing.
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All the Ganeti code runs as root, because all the operations that Ganeti
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is doing require privileges: creating logical volumes, md arrays,
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starting instances, etc. Running as root does not mean setuid, but that
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you need to be root to run the cluster commands.
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Host issues
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-----------
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For a host on which the Ganeti software has been installed but which has
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not been joined in a cluster, there are no changes to the system.
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For a host that has been joined to the cluster, there are very important
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changes:
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  - the host will have its ssh host key replaced with the one of the
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    cluster (which is the one the initial node had at the cluster
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    creation)
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  - root will have added to its authorized_keys file a public key which
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    grants access to all other nodes in the cluster, and furthermore it
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    will also get the private part of this key, which will allow it to
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    login to the other nodes in the cluster (its previous private key
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    will be backed up)
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  - the Ganeti node daemon will accept RPC requests from any host which
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    has the cluster shared secret, and the operations it will do as a
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    result of these requests are:
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      - running commands under the /etc/ganeti/hooks directory
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      - creating DRBD disks between it and the IP it has been told
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      - overwrite a defined list of files on the host
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As you can see, as soon as a node is joined, it becomes equal to all
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other nodes in the cluster, and the security of the cluster is
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determined by the weakest node.
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Note that only the ssh key will allow other machines to run random
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commands on this node; the RPC method will run only:
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  - well defined commands to create, remove, activate logical volumes,
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    DRBD disks, md arrays, start/stop instances, etc;
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  - run ssh commands on other nodes in the cluster, again well-defined
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  - scripts under the /etc/ganeti/hooks directory
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It is therefore important to make sure that the contents of the
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/etc/ganeti/hooks directory is supervised and only trusted sources can
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populate it.
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Cluster issues
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--------------
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As told above, there are multiple ways of communication between cluster
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nodes:
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  - ssh-based, for high-volume traffic (image dumps) or for low-level
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    command (restart the Ganeti node daemon)
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  - python-twisted based, for the usual operation
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  - DRBD traffic, for real-time disk replication traffic
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The ssh traffic is protected (after the initial login to a new node) by
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the cluster-wide shared ssh key.
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The python-twisted traffic is secured by SSL and two pre-conditions: the
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client will refuse to connect to servers which don't have the
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cluster-wide shared SSL certificate, and server will not allow clients
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which don't have the cluster-wide shared secret.
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The DRBD traffic is not protected by anything, as the version of DRBD we
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require (0.7) does not have any protections. It's therefore recommended
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to implement host-level firewalling or to use a separate range of IP
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addresses for the DRBD traffic (this is supported in Ganeti) which is
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not routed outside the cluster.