Security¶
OpenStack services support various security methods including password, policy, and encryption. Additionally, supporting services including the database server and message broker support password security.
To ease the installation process, this guide only covers password security where applicable. You can create secure passwords manually, but the database connection string in services configuration file cannot accept special characters like “@”. We recommend you generate them using a tool such as pwgen, or by running the following command:
$ openssl rand -hex 10
For OpenStack services, this guide uses SERVICE_PASS
to reference
service account passwords and SERVICE_DBPASS
to reference database
passwords.
The following table provides a list of services that require passwords and their associated references in the guide.
Password name |
Description |
---|---|
Database password (no variable used) |
Root password for the database |
|
Password of user |
|
Database password for the Block Storage service |
|
Password of Block Storage service user |
|
Database password for the Dashboard |
|
Password of user |
|
Database password for Image service |
|
Password of Image service user |
|
Database password of Identity service |
|
Secret for the metadata proxy |
|
Database password for the Networking service |
|
Password of Networking service user |
|
Database password for Compute service |
|
Password of Compute service user |
|
Password of the Placement service user |
|
Password of RabbitMQ user |
OpenStack and supporting services require administrative privileges
during installation and operation. In some cases, services perform
modifications to the host that can interfere with deployment automation
tools such as Ansible and Puppet. For example, some OpenStack
services add a root wrapper to sudo
that can interfere with security
policies. See the
Compute service documentation for Pike,
the
Compute service documentation for Queens,
or the
Compute service documentation for Rocky
for more information.
The Networking service assumes default values for kernel network parameters and modifies firewall rules. To avoid most issues during your initial installation, we recommend using a stock deployment of a supported distribution on your hosts. However, if you choose to automate deployment of your hosts, review the configuration and policies applied to them before proceeding further.