[OpenStack Beginner’s Guide for Ubuntu 11.04] Role Based Access Control

Every nova user has a role associated with him. This role can be assigned at the time of creation of the account using “nova-manage add user…” or by editing the profile later using the Openstack Dashboard by the project manager. The role can be either global or project specific in scope. All access in Openstack is governed by roles. Each role has a predefined set of operations permitted within the relevant scope(global or local)

Administrator (admin)

This is a project based role. Users who are created with admin roles at time of creation. They enjoy the rights as a administrator for carrying out tasks such as

• adding an instance
• removing an instance
• removing an image
• adding a key

IT security (itsec)

This is a global role. It permits role holders to quarantine instances.

Project Manager (projectmanager)

This is the default role for project owners. It permits the following tasks:

• adding available roles to user associated in project
• revoking provided roles to a specific user in the project.
• adding an instance
• removing an instance
• removing an image
• adding a key
• managing network related operations

Network Administrator (netadmin)

A role which allows particular user to carry out network related operations such as:

• allocate publicly accessible IP addresses
• assign publicly accessible IP addresses
• create firewall rules
• modify firewall rules

Developer (developer)

This is a general purpose role that is assigned to users by default. This role can create and download keys.

Summary of role and permitted tasks for each role:

Roles	Global	Local	Key mgmt.	Instance mgmt.	Image mgmt.	Network mgmt.	Project mgmt.	Creating / Modifying Firewall Rules
Developer	No	Yes	Yes	No	No	No	No	No
Project Manager	No	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
It Security	Yes	No	Yes	No	No	No	No	No
Cloud Admin	Yes	No	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Net Admin	No	No	No	No	No	No	No	Yes

Role Management is done using “nova-manage role” command. Please refer to the section on OpenStack Commands for more details.

Examples:

Add role to a user

nova-manage role add user1 netadmin

Remove a role from a particular user

nova-manage role remove user1 netadmin

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