Integrate Castellan for Key Management

https://blueprints.launchpad.net/cinder/+spec/use-castellan-key-manager

Castellan is a key manager interface library that is intended to be usable with multiple back ends, including Barbican. The Castellan code is based on the basic key manager interface that resides in Nova and Cinder. Now that the key manager interface lives in a separate library, the key manager code can be removed from Nova and Cinder, and Castellan can be used as the key manager interface instead.

Problem description

As encryption features in OpenStack projects are becoming more common, the projects typically need a way to interface with a key manager. Different deployers may have different requirements for key managers, so the key manager interface must also be configurable to have different back ends. The Castellan key manager interface was based off the key manager interfaces found in Cinder and Nova. Now that the shared key manager interface lives in a separate library, the original key manager interface embedded in Cinder can be removed and Castellan used instead.

Use Cases

Castellan supports existing features such as volume encryption.

Proposed change

Castellan must be added to the required libraries list.

Castellan by default pulls configuration options from a Castellan-specific configuration file in /etc/castellan, but can also take in configuration options if passed in directly. The configuration options for the key manager can still be specified in cinder.conf, and passed along to Castellan.

The old key manager interface code and back end implementations in cinder/keymgr and tests in cinder/tests/unit/keymgr can be removed. Any place in the Cinder code where the key manager interface was called will be replaced by calls to Castellan instead. Castellan does not include ConfKeyManager, an insecure fixed-key key manager that reads the key from the configuration file. The implementation for ConfKeyManager will remain in Cinder but will be converted to a Castellan plugin to exercise the relevant code paths.

Alternatives

The alternative is to leave the key manager interface as it is, but this means that Cinder’s key manager will not benefit from the updates, new features, and future additional back ends available in Castellan.

Data model impact

None

REST API impact

None

Security impact

Castellan behaves very similarly to the current Cinder key manager. Castellan has added improvements and bug fixes beyond what is currently in the Nova and Cinder key managers, making it more secure. The fixed-key key manager found in Nova and Cinder is insecure for deployments, but is useful for testing. Castellan doesn’t include the fixed-key key manager, so the ConfKeyManager will be converted to a Castellan plugin and will remain in the Cinder code.

Notifications impact

None

Other end user impact

None

Performance Impact

None

Other deployer impact

The deployer should be made aware of a change in the default key manager back end. The current default back end in Cinder is a fixed key, but Castellan uses Barbican as the default. This means that the deployer should ensure Barbican is running and the fixed key added to Barbican so it can continue to be used.

The options in the Cinder configuration file for volume encryption will change. The option ‘keymgr’ will be spelled out to ‘key_manager’. The key manager option group will still have an option ‘api_class’ to specify the desired back end. In the ‘barbican’ option group, a few new options will be available to increase the robustness of the back end, such as the number of times to check if a key has been successfully created.

To maintain backwards compatibility, the old options will still be listed as deprecated options. Standard deprecation policy will be followed, and these old options should be removed in the next release cycle.

Developer impact

Cinder developers should not be impacted by this change. If developers find more uses for a key manager, Castellan should be just as easy to use as the current Cinder key manager interface.

Implementation

Assignee(s)

Primary assignee:

Kaitlin Farr <kaitlin.farr@jhuapl.edu> kfarr on IRC

Other contributors:

None

Work Items

  • Add Castellan to Cinder requirements.

  • Replace calls to Cinder’s key manager with calls to Castellan.

  • Remove Cinder key manager code.

  • Update documentation.

Dependencies

This change depends on Castellan, version >= 0.2.0. Castellan is already in OpenStack’s global requirements.

Testing

This change can be unit tested using a simple in-memory back end. As actual deployments should be using Barbican, this feature should be tested using a Barbican back end, too.

Documentation Impact

These changes will be documented. Cinder documentation for volume encryption will be updated to reference Castellan [4].

References

[1] Castellan source code:

https://github.com/openstack/castellan

[2] Castellan in OpenStack’s global requirements:

https://github.com/openstack/requirements/blob/master/global-requirements.txt

[3] Current Cinder key manager implementation

https://github.com/openstack/cinder/tree/master/cinder/keymgr

[4] Volume encryption configuration reference

http://docs.openstack.org/liberty/config-reference/content/section_volume-encryption.html