Configure LDAP authentication in InfluxDB Enterprise

Configure InfluxDB Enterprise to use LDAP (Lightweight Directory Access Protocol) to:

• Validate user permissions
• Synchronize InfluxDB and LDAP so each LDAP request doesn’t need to be queried

Configure LDAP for an InfluxDB Enterprise cluster

To use LDAP with an InfluxDB Enterprise cluster, do the following:

1. Configure data nodes
2. Configure meta nodes
3. Create, verify, and upload the LDAP configuration file
4. Restart meta and data nodes

Configure data nodes

Update the following settings in each data node configuration file (/etc/influxdb/influxdb.conf):

1. Under [http], enable HTTP authentication by setting auth-enabled to true. (Or set the corresponding environment variable INFLUXDB_HTTP_AUTH_ENABLED to true.)
2. Configure the HTTP shared secret to validate requests using JSON web tokens (JWT) and sign each HTTP payload with the secret and username. Set the [http] configuration setting for shared-secret, or the corresponding environment variable INFLUXDB_HTTP_SHARED_SECRET.
3. If you’re enabling authentication on meta nodes, you must also include the following configurations:
   • INFLUXDB_META_META_AUTH_ENABLED environment variable, or [http] configuration setting meta-auth-enabled, is set to true. This value must be the same value as the meta node’s meta.auth-enabled configuration.
   • INFLUXDB_META_META_INTERNAL_SHARED_SECRET, or the corresponding [meta] configuration setting meta-internal-shared-secret, is set to true. This value must be the same value as the meta node’s meta.internal-shared-secret.

Configure meta nodes

Update the following settings in each meta node configuration file (/etc/influxdb/influxdb-meta.conf):

1. Configure the meta node META shared secret to validate requests using JSON web tokens (JWT) and sign each HTTP payload with the username and shared secret.
2. Set the [meta] configuration setting internal-shared-secret to "<internal-shared-secret>". (Or set the INFLUXDB_META_INTERNAL_SHARED_SECRET environment variable.)
3. Set the [meta] configuration setting meta.ldap-allowed to true on all meta nodes in your cluster. (Or set the INFLUXDB_META_LDAP_ALLOWEDenvironment variable.)

Authenticate your connection to InfluxDB

To authenticate your InfluxDB connection, run the following command, replacing username:password with your credentials:

curl -u username:password -XPOST "http://localhost:8086/..."

For more detail on authentication, see Authentication and authorization in InfluxDB.

Create, verify, and upload the LDAP configuration file

1. To create a sample LDAP configuration file, run the following command:

   influxd-ctl ldap sample-config
   

2. Save the sample file and edit as needed for your LDAP server. For detail, see the sample LDAP configuration file below.

   To use fine-grained authorization (FGA) with LDAP, you must map InfluxDB Enterprise roles to key-value pairs in the LDAP database. For more information, see Fine-grained authorization in InfluxDB Enterprise. The InfluxDB admin user doesn’t include permissions for InfluxDB Enterprise roles.

3. To verify your LDAP configuration, run:

   influxd-ctl ldap verify -ldap-config /path/to/ldap.toml
   

4. To load your LDAP configuration file, run the following command:

   influxd-ctl ldap set-config /path/to/ldap.toml
   

Restart meta and data nodes

Restart all meta and data nodes in your InfluxDB Enterprise cluster to load your updated configuration.

On each meta node, run:

service influxdb-meta restart

sudo systemctl restart influxdb-meta

On each data node, run:

service influxdb restart

sudo systemctl restart influxdb

Sample LDAP configuration

The following is a sample configuration file that connects to a publicly available LDAP server.

A DN (“distinguished name”) uniquely identifies an entry and describes its position in the directory information tree (DIT) hierarchy. The DN of an LDAP entry is similar to a file path on a file system. DNs refers to multiple DN entries.

enabled = true

[[servers]]
  enabled = true

[[servers]]
  host = "<LDAPserver>"
  port = 389

  # Security mode for LDAP connection to this server.
  # The recommended security is set "starttls" by default. This uses an initial unencrypted connection
  # and upgrades to TLS as the first action against the server,
  # per the LDAPv3 standard.
  # Other options are "starttls+insecure" to behave the same as starttls
  # but skip server certificate verification, or "none" to use an unencrypted connection.
  security = "starttls"

  # Credentials to use when searching for a user or group.
  bind-dn = "cn=read-only-admin,dc=example,dc=com"
  bind-password = "password"

  # Base DNs to use when applying the search-filter to discover an LDAP user.
  search-base-dns = [
    "dc=example,dc=com",
  ]

  # LDAP filter to discover a user's DN.
  # %s will be replaced with the provided username.
  search-filter = "(uid=%s)"
  # On Active Directory you might use "(sAMAccountName=%s)".

  # Base DNs to use when searching for groups.
  group-search-base-dns = ["dc=example,dc=com"]

  # LDAP filter to identify groups that a user belongs to.
  # %s will be replaced with the user's DN.
  group-membership-search-filter = "(&(objectClass=groupOfUniqueNames)(uniqueMember=%s))"
  # On Active Directory you might use "(&(objectClass=group)(member=%s))".

  # Attribute to use to determine the "group" in the group-mappings section.
  group-attribute = "ou"
  # On Active Directory you might use "cn".

  # LDAP filter to search for a group with a particular name.
  # This is used when warming the cache to load group membership.
  group-search-filter = "(&(objectClass=groupOfUniqueNames)(cn=%s))"
  # On Active Directory you might use "(&(objectClass=group)(cn=%s))".

  # Attribute of a group that contains the DNs of the group's members.
  group-member-attribute = "uniqueMember"
  # On Active Directory you might use "member".

  # Create an administrator role in InfluxDB and then log in as a member of the admin LDAP group. Only members of a group with the administrator role can complete admin tasks.
  # For example, if tesla is the only member of the `italians` group, you must log in as tesla/password.
  admin-groups = ["italians"]

  # These two roles would have to be created by hand if you want these LDAP group memberships to do anything.
  [[servers.group-mappings]]
    group = "mathematicians"
    role = "arithmetic"

  [[servers.group-mappings]]
    group = "scientists"
    role = "laboratory"