How to integrate Percona Operator for MongoDB with OpenLDAP

LDAP services provided by software like OpenLDAP, Microsoft Active Directory, etc. are widely used by enterprises to control information about users, systems, networks, services and applications and the corresponding access rights for the authentication/authorization process in a centralized way.

The following guide covers a simple integration of the already-installed OpenLDAP server with Percona Distribution for MongoDB and the Operator. You can know more about LDAP concepts and LDIF files used to configure it, and find how to install and configure OpenLDAP in the official OpenLDAP and Percona Server for MongoDB documentation.

The OpenLDAP side

You can add needed OpenLDAP settings will the following LDIF portions:

0-percona-ous.ldif: |-
  dn: ou=perconadba,dc=ldap,dc=local
  objectClass: organizationalUnit
  ou: perconadba
1-percona-users.ldif: |-
  dn: uid=percona,ou=perconadba,dc=ldap,dc=local
  objectClass: top
  objectClass: account
  objectClass: posixAccount
  objectClass: shadowAccount
  cn: percona
  uid: percona
  uidNumber: 1100
  gidNumber: 100
  homeDirectory: /home/percona
  loginShell: /bin/bash
  gecos: percona
  userPassword: {crypt}x
  shadowLastChange: -1
  shadowMax: -1
  shadowWarning: -1 
2-group-cn.ldif: |-
  dn: cn=admin,ou=perconadba,dc=ldap,dc=local
  cn: admin
  objectClass: groupOfUniqueNames
  objectClass: top
  ou: perconadba
  uniqueMember: uid=percona,ou=perconadba,dc=ldap,dc=local

Also a read-only user should be created for the database-issued user lookups. If everything is done correctly, the following command should work, resetting the percona user password:

$ ldappasswd -s percona -D "cn=admin,dc=ldap,dc=local" -w password -x "uid=percona,ou=perconadba,dc=ldap,dc=local"

Note

If you are not sure about the approach to make references between user and group objects, OpenDAP overlays provide one of the possible ways to go.

The MongoDB and Operator side

The following steps will look different depending on whether sharding is on (the default behavior) or off.

If sharding is off

In order to get MongoDB connected with OpenLDAP in case of a a non-sharded (ReplicaSet) MongoDB cluster we need to configure two things:

• Mongod
• Internal mongodb role

Create configuration Secrets for mongod:

my_mongod.conf

security:
  authorization: "enabled"
  ldap:
    authz:
      queryTemplate: '{USER}?memberOf?base'
    servers: "openldap"
    transportSecurity: none
    bind:
      queryUser: "cn=readonly,dc=ldap,dc=local"
      queryPassword: "password"
    userToDNMapping:
      '[
          {
            match : "(.+)",
            ldapQuery: "OU=perconadba,DC=ldap,DC=local??sub?(uid={0})"
          }
   ]'
setParameter:
  authenticationMechanisms: 'PLAIN,SCRAM-SHA-1'

Note

This fragment provides mongod with LDAP-specific parameters, such as FQDN of the LDAP server (server), explicit lookup user, domain rules, etc.

Put the snippet on you local machine and create a Kubernetes Secret object named based on your MongoDB cluster name:

$ kubectl create secret generic <your_cluster_name>-rs0-mongod --from-file=mongod.conf=my_mongod.conf

Next step is to start the MongoDB cluster up as it’s described in Install Percona server for MongoDB on Kubernetes. On successful completion of the steps from this doc, we are to proceed with setting the roles for the ‘external’ (managed by LDAP) user inside the MongoDB. For this, log into MongoDB as administrator:

$ mongo "mongodb+srv://userAdmin:<userAdmin_password>@<your_cluster_name>-rs0.<your_namespace>.svc.cluster.local/admin?replicaSet=rs0&ssl=false"

When logged in, execute the following:

mongos> db.getSiblingDB("admin").createRole(
{
 role: "cn=admin,ou=perconadba,dc=ldap,dc=local",
 privileges: [],
 roles : [
   {
     "role" : "readAnyDatabase",
     "db" : "admin"
   },
   {
     "role" : "dbAdminAnyDatabase",
     "db" : "admin"
   },
   {
     "role" : "clusterMonitor",
     "db" : "admin"
   },
   {
     "role" : "readWriteAnyDatabase",
     "db" : "admin"
   },
   {
     "role" : "restore",
     "db" : "admin"
   },
   {
     "role" : "backup",
     "db" : "admin"
   }
 ],
}
)

Note

Extra roles listed in the above example are just to show more than one possible variant.

Now the new percona user created inside OpenLDAP is able to login to MongoDB as administrator. Verify whether the user role has been identified correctly with the following command:

$ mongo --username percona --password 'percona' --authenticationMechanism 'PLAIN' --authenticationDatabase '$external' --host <mongodb-rs-endpoint> --port 27017

When logged in, execute the following:

mongos> db.runCommand({connectionStatus:1})

The output should be like follows:

{
 "authInfo" : {
   "authenticatedUsers" : [
     {
       "user" : "percona",
       "db" : "$external"
     }
   ],
   "authenticatedUserRoles" : [
     {
       "role" : "restore",
       "db" : "admin"
     },
     {
       "role" : "readAnyDatabase",
       "db" : "admin"
     },
     {
       "role" : "clusterMonitor",
       "db" : "admin"
     },
     {
       "role" : "dbAdminAnyDatabase",
       "db" : "admin"
     },
     {
       "role" : "backup",
       "db" : "admin"
     },
     {
       "role" : "cn=admin,ou=perconadba,dc=ldap,dc=local",
       "db" : "admin"
     },
     {
       "role" : "readWriteAnyDatabase",
       "db" : "admin"
     }
   ]
 },
 "ok" : 1,
 "$clusterTime" : {
   "clusterTime" : Timestamp(1663067287, 4),
   "signature" : {
     "hash" : BinData(0,"ZaLGSVj4ZwZrngXZSOqXB5rx+oo="),
     "keyId" : NumberLong("7142816031004688408")
   }
 },
 "operationTime" : Timestamp(1663067287, 4)
}
mongos>

If sharding is on

In order to get MongoDB connected with OpenLDAP in this case we need to configure three things:

• Mongod
• Internal mongodb role
• Mongos

Both the routing interface (mongos) and the configuraion ReplicaSet (mongod) have to be configured to make the LDAP server a part of the Authentication/Authorization chain.

Note

mongos is just a router between shards and underlying database instances, and configuration ReplicaSet is responsible for keeping information about database users and roles. Thus, the router can perform only authentication, while authorization is the responsibility of the configuration ReplicaSet.

Create configuration Secrets for the router and the configuration ReplicaSet respectively.

Secret for the router should look as follows:

my_mongos.conf

security:
  ldap:
    servers: "openldap"
    transportSecurity: none
    bind:
      queryUser: "cn=readonly,dc=ldap,dc=local"
      queryPassword: "password"
    userToDNMapping:
      '[
          {
            match : "(.+)",
            ldapQuery: "OU=perconadba,DC=ldap,DC=local??sub?(uid={0})"
          }
    ]'
setParameter:
  authenticationMechanisms: 'PLAIN,SCRAM-SHA-1'

Put the snippet on you local machine and create a Kubernetes Secret object named based on your MongoDB cluster name:

$ kubectl create secret generic <your_cluster_name>-mongos --from-file=mongos.conf=my_mongos.conf

Secret for the configuration ReplicaSet should look as follows:

my_mongod.conf

security:
  authorization: "enabled"
  ldap:
    authz:
      queryTemplate: '{USER}?memberOf?base'
    servers: "openldap"
    transportSecurity: none
    bind:
      queryUser: "cn=readonly,dc=ldap,dc=local"
      queryPassword: "password"
    userToDNMapping:
      '[
          {
            match : "(.+)",
            ldapQuery: "OU=perconadba,DC=ldap,DC=local??sub?(uid={0})"
          }
    ]'
setParameter:
  authenticationMechanisms: 'PLAIN,SCRAM-SHA-1'

Put the snippet on you local machine and create a Kubernetes Secret object named based on your MongoDB cluster name:

$ kubectl create secret generic <your_cluster_name>-cfg-mongod --from-file=mongod.conf=my_mongod.conf

Both files are pretty much the same except the authz subsection, which is only present for the configuration ReplicaSet.

Next step is to start the MongoDB cluster up as it’s described in Install Percona server for MongoDB on Kubernetes. On successful completion of the steps from this doc, we are to proceed with setting the roles for the ‘external’ (managed by LDAP) user inside the MongoDB. For this, log into MongoDB as administrator:

$ mongo "mongodb://userAdmin:<userAdmin_password>@<your_cluster_name>-mongos.<your_namespace>.svc.cluster.local/admin?ssl=false"

When logged in, execute the following:

mongos> db.getSiblingDB("admin").createRole(
{
 role: "cn=admin,ou=perconadba,dc=ldap,dc=local",
 privileges: [],
 roles : [
   {
     "role" : "readAnyDatabase",
     "db" : "admin"
   },
   {
     "role" : "dbAdminAnyDatabase",
     "db" : "admin"
   },
   {
     "role" : "clusterMonitor",
     "db" : "admin"
   },
   {
     "role" : "readWriteAnyDatabase",
     "db" : "admin"
   },
   {
     "role" : "restore",
     "db" : "admin"
   },
   {
     "role" : "backup",
     "db" : "admin"
   }
 ],
}
)

Note

Extra roles listed in the above example are just to show more than one possible variant.

Now the new percona user created inside OpenLDAP is able to login to MongoDB as administrator. Verify whether the user role has been identified correctly with the following command:

$ mongo --username percona --password 'percona' --authenticationMechanism 'PLAIN' --authenticationDatabase '$external' --host <your_cluster_name>-mongos --port 27017

When logged in, execute the following:

mongos> db.runCommand({connectionStatus:1})

The output should be like follows:

{
 "authInfo" : {
   "authenticatedUsers" : [
     {
       "user" : "percona",
       "db" : "$external"
     }
   ],
   "authenticatedUserRoles" : [
     {
       "role" : "restore",
       "db" : "admin"
     },
     {
       "role" : "readAnyDatabase",
       "db" : "admin"
     },
     {
       "role" : "clusterMonitor",
       "db" : "admin"
     },
     {
       "role" : "dbAdminAnyDatabase",
       "db" : "admin"
     },
     {
       "role" : "backup",
       "db" : "admin"
     },
     {
       "role" : "cn=admin,ou=perconadba,dc=ldap,dc=local",
       "db" : "admin"
     },
     {
       "role" : "readWriteAnyDatabase",
       "db" : "admin"
     }
   ]
 },
 "ok" : 1,
 "$clusterTime" : {
   "clusterTime" : Timestamp(1663067287, 4),
   "signature" : {
     "hash" : BinData(0,"ZaLGSVj4ZwZrngXZSOqXB5rx+oo="),
     "keyId" : NumberLong("7142816031004688408")
   }
 },
 "operationTime" : Timestamp(1663067287, 4)
}
mongos>

Using LDAP over TLS connection

LDAP over TLS allows you to use Transport Layer Security, encrypting your communication between MongoDB and OpenLDAP server.

Here are the needed modifications to The MongoDB and Operator side subsection which will enable it:

1. First, create a secret that contains the SSL certificate to connect to LDAP. The following example creates it from the file with CA certificate (the one you use in /etc/openldap/ldap.conf), naming the new secret my-ldap-secret:

   $ kubectl create secret generic my-ldap-secret --from-file=ca.crt=ldap-ca.pem
   

2. Set the secrets.ldapSecret Custom Resource option to the name of your newly created secret. Your modified deploy/cr.yaml may look as follows:

   ...
     secrets:
       ...
       ldapSecret: my-ldap-secret
   

3. It is also necessary to change the value of transportSecurity to tls in mongod and mongos configurations. The configuration is similar to one described at the The MongoDB and Operator side subsection:

Changed mongod configuration should look as follows:

``` yaml title="my_mongod.conf"  hl_lines="7"
security:
  authorization: "enabled"
  ldap:
    authz:
      queryTemplate: '{USER}?memberOf?base'
    servers: "openldap"
    transportSecurity: tls
    bind:
      queryUser: "cn=readonly,dc=ldap,dc=local"
      queryPassword: "password"
    userToDNMapping:
      '[
          {
            match : "(.+)",
            ldapQuery: "OU=perconadba,DC=ldap,DC=local??sub?(uid={0})"
          }
   ]'
setParameter:
  authenticationMechanisms: 'PLAIN,SCRAM-SHA-1'
```

If **sharding is on**, you will also need to change mongos configuration:

```yaml title="my_mongos.conf" hl_lines="4"
security:
  ldap:
    servers: "openldap"
    transportSecurity: tls
    bind:
      queryUser: "cn=readonly,dc=ldap,dc=local"
      queryPassword: "password"
    userToDNMapping:
      '[
          {
            match : "(.+)",
            ldapQuery: "OU=perconadba,DC=ldap,DC=local??sub?(uid={0})"
          }
    ]'
setParameter:
  authenticationMechanisms: 'PLAIN,SCRAM-SHA-1'
```

---

Last update: 2025-06-17