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Isilon: Ambari Automated Kerberos Configuration with Isilon

Summary: This article walks you through configuring Kerberos security with an Ambari-managed Hadoop cluster.

This article applies to This article does not apply to This article is not tied to any specific product. Not all product versions are identified in this article.

Symptoms

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Cause

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Resolution

Note: This topic is part of the Using Hadoop with OneFS - Isilon Info Hub.

This article describes how to  configure Kerberos security with an Ambari-managed Hadoop cluster.

Kerberos is central to strong authentication and encryption for Hadoop, but it can be a challenge to configure and administer. Ambari 2.0 introduced wizard-driven automated Kerberos configuration, which makes the process much faster and less error-prone. Beginning in OneFS 8.0.0.1, Dell EMC Isilon customers can leverage this excellent feature.


Prerequisites

  • OneFS 8.0.0.1 or higher.
  • Ambari 2.0 or higher.
  • MIT KDC running (Heimdal is not supported). Follow the steps here to setup up your Kerberos infrastructure.
  • Forward and reverse DNS between all hosts.
  • All services are running (green) on the Ambari Dashboard.

Enable Kerberos

Pre-Configuration

Before launching the wizard, you must set two configurations and restart all services.
  • In HDFS -> Custom core-site set "hadoop.security.token.service.use_ip" to "false"
  • In MapReduce2 -> Advanced mapred-site add "`hadoop classpath`:" to the beginning of "mapreduce.application.classpath". Note the colon and backticks (but do not copy the quotation marks).

Get Started

Navigate to Admin -> Kerberos and press the "Enable Kerberos" button. The titles within this section refer to the titles of the Kerberos wizard pages.

SLN319432_en_US__1i_isilon-1-enable

Select "Existing MIT KDC", and ensure that the pre-requisites are met, then click "Next". Note that Isilon does not use Java, and does not need the JCE.

Configure Kerberos / Install and Test Kerberos Client

Fill in all KDC and admin server information. On step 3 (Install and Test Kerberos Client), the Ambari server will do a smoke test to ensure that you  configured Kerberos correctly.


SLN319432_en_US__2i_isilon-2-install


Configure Identities / Confirm Configuration

 a) Ambari User Principals (UPNs)

Ambari creates user principals in the form $ -$ @$ , then uses hadoop.security.auth_to_local in core-site.xml to map the principals into just $ on the filesystem.

Isilon does not honor the mapping rules, so you must remove the -$ from all principals in the "Ambari Principals" section. Isilon will strip off the @$ , so no aliasing is necessary. In an Ambari 2.2.1 cluster running HDFS, YARN, MapReduce2, Tez, Hive, HBase, Pig, Sqoop, Oozie, Zookeeper, Falcon, Storm, Flume, Accumulo, Ambari Metrics, Kafka, Knox, Mahout, Slider, and Spark, make the following modifications in the "General" tab:
  • Smokeuser Principal Name: ${cluster-env/smokeuser}-$ @$ => ${cluster-env/smokeuser}@$
  • spark.history.kerberos.principal: ${spark-env/spark_user}-$ @$ => ${spark-env/spark_user}-@$
  • Storm principal name: ${storm-env/storm_user}-$ @$ => ${storm-env/storm_user}-@$
  • HBase user principal: ${hbase-env/hbase_user}-$ @$ => ${hbase-env/hbase_user}@$
  • HDFS user principal: ${hadoop-env/hdfs_user}-$ @$ => ${hadoop-env/hdfs_user}@$
  • accumulo_principal_name: ${accumulo-env/accumulo_user}-$ @$ => ${accumulo-env/accumulo_user}@$
  • trace.user: tracer-$ @$ => tracer@$

SLN319432_en_US__3i_isilon-3-identities

b) Service Principals (SPNs)

Ambari creates service principals, some of which are different than their UNIX usernames. Again, since Isilon does not honor the mapping rules, you must modify the principal names to match their UNIX usernames. In the Ambari 2.2.1 cluster, make  the following modifications in the "Advanced" tab:
  • HDFS -> dfs.namenode.kerberos.principal: nn/_HOST@$ => hdfs/_HOST@$
  • YARN -> yarn.resourcemanager.principal: rm/_HOST@$ => yarn/_HOST@$
  • YARN -> yarn.nodemanager.principal: nm/_HOST@$ => yarn/_HOST@$
  • MapReduce2 -> mapreduce.jobhistory.principal: jhs/_HOST@$ => mapred/_HOST@$
  • Falcon -> *.dfs.namenode.kerberos.principal: nn/_HOST@$ => hdfs/_HOST@$
 

SLN319432_en_US__4i_isilon-4-identitiesconfig


After configuring the appropriate principals, press "Next". At the "Confirm Configuration" screen, press "Next".

Stop Services / Kerberize Cluster

Stopping and Kerberizing services should succeed.
 

SLN319432_en_US__5i_isilon-5-cluster


Do not proceed: Isilon does not allow Ambari to create keytabs for Isilon principals. Instead, you must manually configure Kerberos on Isilon using the steps below.

a) Create KDC as an Isilon auth provider

Note: If this Isilon zone is already configured to use your MIT KDC, you can skip these steps.

isi auth krb5 create --realm=$REALM --admin-server=$admin_server --kdc=$kdc_server --user=$admin_principal --password=$admin_password
isi zone zones modify --zone=$isilon_zone --add-auth-provider=krb5:$REALM

b) Create service principals for HDFS and HTTP (for WebHDFS).

isi auth krb5 spn create --provider-name=$REALM --spn=hdfs/$isilon_smartconnect@$REALM --user=$admin_principal --password=$admin_password
isi auth krb5 spn create --provider-name=$REALM --spn=HTTP/$isilon_smartconnect@$REALM --user=$admin_principal --password=$admin_password

c) Create any necessary proxy users

In unsecured clusters, any user can impersonate any other user. In secured clusters, proxy users need to be explicitly specified.
If you have Hive or Oozie, add the appropriate proxy users.

isi hdfs proxyusers create oozie --zone=$isilon_zone --add-user=ambari-qa
isi hdfs proxyusers create hive --zone=$isilon_zone --add-user=ambari-qa

d) Disable simple authentication

Only Kerberos or delegation token authentication is allowed.

isi hdfs settings modify --zone=$isilon_zone --authentication-mode=kerberos_only

Now that Isilon is configured as well, press "Next" in Ambari to move on to the last step of the wizard.

Start and Test Services
 

SLN319432_en_US__6i_isilon-6-startservices

 

If services do not start, here are some tricks for debugging Kerberos issues:
  1. Due to a bug in YARN, you need to set the "yarn.resourcemanager.principal" to yarn/$rm_hostname@$REALM in YARN -> Custom yarn-site. The "_HOST" syntax does not work with Kerberos enabled.
  2. To debug Java GSSAPI/Kerberos errors, add "-Dsun.security.krb5.debug=true" to HADOOP_OPTS.
  3. For HTTP 401 errors, use curl with -iv for extra debug information.
  4. Ensure forward and reverse DNS is set up between all hosts.
(Optional) Strong RPC Security

In HDFS -> Custom core-site set "hadoop.rpc.protection" to "integrity" or "privacy". In addition to authentication, integrity guarantees messages have not been tampered with, and privacy encrypts all messages.

Run a job!

From any client host, try a MapReduce job!

kinit <some-user> yarn jar /usr/hdp/current/hadoop-mapreduce-client/hadoop-mapreduce-examples.jar pi 1 1000
Job Finished in 37.635 seconds
Estimated value of Pi is 3.14800000000000000000
Congratulations--you have secured your cluster with Kerberos!

(Optional) Disable Kerberos

Clean up Isilon

You should clean up Isilon first. This is essentially the inverse of enabling Kerberos.

a) Disable Kerberos authentication

isi hdfs settings modify --authentication-mode=simple_only --zone=$isilon_zone

b) Delete any proxy users

isi hdfs proxyusers delete oozie --zone=$isilon_zone
isi hdfs proxyusers delete hive --zone=$isilon_zone

c) Delete principals

isi auth krb5 spn delete --provider-name=$REALM --spn=hdfs/$isilon_smartconnect@$REALM --all
isi auth krb5 spn delete --provider-name=$REALM --spn=HTTP/$isilon_smartconnect@$REALM --all

Note that the above commands only remove those principals from Isilon, but do not remove them from the KDC. Use these commands to remove the Isilon principals from the KDC:

kadmin -p $admin_principal
kadmin: delete_principal hdfs/$isilon_smartconnect@$REALM
kadmin: delete_principal HTTP/$isilon_smartconnect@$REALM

d) Remove KDC as an Isilon authentication provider

isi zone zones modify --zone=$isilon_zone --remove-auth-provider=krb5:$REALM
isi auth krb5 delete --provider-name=$REALM

Clean up clients using Ambari

Press "Disable Kerberos" in Admin -> Kerberos. All the services should come up green.

Affected Products

Isilon, PowerScale OneFS, Isilon with HDFS
Article Properties
Article Number: 000128963
Article Type: Solution
Last Modified: 14 Sept 2023
Version:  5
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