Capsule and Rancher Projects

This guide explains how to setup the integration between Capsule and Rancher Projects.

It then explains how for the tenant user, the access to Kubernetes resources is transparent.

Manually

Pre-requisites

  • An authentication provider in Rancher, e.g. an OIDC identity provider
  • A Tenant Member Cluster Role in Rancher

Configure an identity provider for Kubernetes

You can follow this general guide to configure an OIDC authentication for Kubernetes.

For a Keycloak specific setup yon can check this resources list.

Known issues

Keycloak new URLs without /auth makes Rancher crash

Create the Tenant Member Cluster Role

A custom Rancher Cluster Role is needed to allow Tenant users, to read cluster-scope resources and Rancher doesn't provide e built-in Cluster Role with this tailored set of privileges.

When logged-in to the Rancher UI as administrator, from the Users & Authentication page, create a Cluster Role named Tenant Member with the following privileges:

  • get, list, watch operations over IngressClasses resources.
  • get, list, watch operations over StorageClasses resources.
  • get, list, watch operations over PriorityClasses resources.
  • get, list, watch operations over Nodes resources.
  • get, list, watch operations over RuntimeClasses resources.

Configuration (administration)

Tenant onboarding

When onboarding tenants, the administrator needs to create the following, in order to bind the Project with the Tenant:

  • In Rancher, create a Project.
  • In the target Kubernetes cluster, create a Tenant, with the following specification:

    kind: Tenant
    ...
    spec:
      namespaceOptions:
        additionalMetadata:
          annotations:
            field.cattle.io/projectId: ${CLUSTER_ID}:${PROJECT_ID}
          labels:
            field.cattle.io/projectId: ${PROJECT_ID}

    where $CLUSTER_ID and $PROEJCT_ID can be retrieved, assuming a valid $CLUSTER_NAME, as:

    CLUSTER_NAME=foo
    CLUSTER_ID=$(kubectl get cluster -n fleet-default ${CLUSTER_NAME} -o jsonpath='{.status.clusterName}')
    PROJECT_IDS=$(kubectl get projects -n $CLUSTER_ID -o jsonpath="{.items[*].metadata.name}")
    for project_id in $PROJECT_IDS; do echo "${project_id}"; done

    More on declarative Projects here.

  • In the identity provider, create a user with correct OIDC claim of the Tenant.
  • In Rancher, add the new user to the Project with the Read-only Role.
  • In Rancher, add the new user to the Cluster with the Tenant Member Cluster Role.

Create the Tenant Member Project Role

A custom Project Role is needed to allow Tenant users, with minimum set of privileges and create and delete Namespaces.

Create a Project Role named Tenant Member that inherits the privileges from the following Roles:

  • read-only
  • create-ns

Usage

When the configuration administrative tasks have been completed, the tenant users are ready to use the Kubernetes cluster transparently.

For example can create Namespaces in a self-service mode, that would be otherwise impossible with the sole use of Rancher Projects.

Namespace creation

From the tenant user perspective both CLI and the UI are valid interfaces to communicate with.

From CLI

  • Tenants kubectl-logs in to the OIDC provider
  • Tenant creates a Namespace, as a valid OIDC-discoverable user.

the Namespace is now part of both the Tenant and the Project.

As administrator, you can verify with:

kubectl get tenant ${TENANT_NAME} -o jsonpath='{.status}'
kubectl get namespace -l field.cattle.io/projectId=${PROJECT_ID}

From UI

  • Tenants logs in to Rancher, with a valid OIDC-discoverable user (in a valid Tenant group).
  • Tenant user create a valid Namespace

the Namespace is now part of both the Tenant and the Project.

As administrator, you can verify with:

kubectl get tenant ${TENANT_NAME} -o jsonpath='{.status}'
kubectl get namespace -l field.cattle.io/projectId=${PROJECT_ID}

Additional administration

Project monitoring

Before proceeding is recommended to read the official Rancher documentation about Project Monitors.

In summary, the setup is composed by a cluster-level Prometheus, Prometheus Federator via which single Project-level Prometheus federate to.

Network isolation

Before proceeding is recommended to read the official Capsule documentation about NetworkPolicy at Tenant-level`.

Network isolation and Project Monitor

As Rancher's Project Monitor deploys the Prometheus stack in a Namespace that is not part of neither the Project nor the Tenant Namespaces, is important to apply the label selectors in the NetworkPolicy ingress rules to the Namespace created by Project Monitor.

That Project monitoring Namespace will be named as cattle-project-<PROJECT_ID>-monitoring.

For example, if the NetworkPolicy is configured to allow all ingress traffic from Namespace with label capsule.clastix.io/tenant=foo, this label is to be applied to the Project monitoring Namespace too.

Then, a NetworkPolicy can be applied at Tenant-level with Capsule GlobalTenantResources. For example it can be applied a minimal policy for the oil Tenant:

apiVersion: capsule.clastix.io/v1beta2
kind: GlobalTenantResource
metadata:
  name: oil-networkpolicies
spec:
  tenantSelector:
    matchLabels:
      capsule.clastix.io/tenant: oil
  resyncPeriod: 360s
  pruningOnDelete: true
  resources:
    - namespaceSelector:
        matchLabels:
          capsule.clastix.io/tenant: oil
      rawItems:
      - apiVersion: networking.k8s.io/v1
        kind: NetworkPolicy
        metadata:
          name: oil-minimal
        spec:
          podSelector: {}
          policyTypes:
            - Ingress
            - Egress
          ingress:
            # Intra-Tenant
            - from:
              - namespaceSelector:
                  matchLabels:
                    capsule.clastix.io/tenant: oil
            # Rancher Project Monitor stack
            - from:
              - namespaceSelector:
                  matchLabels:
                    role: monitoring
			# Kubernetes nodes
            - from:
              - ipBlock:
                  cidr: 192.168.1.0/24
          egress:
            # Kubernetes DNS server
            - to:
              - namespaceSelector: {}
                podSelector:
                  matchLabels:
                    k8s-app: kube-dns
                ports:
                  - port: 53
                    protocol: UDP
            # Intra-Tenant
            - to:
              - namespaceSelector:
                  matchLabels:
                    capsule.clastix.io/tenant: oil
            # Kubernetes API server
            - to:
              - ipBlock:
                  cidr: 10.43.0.1/32
                ports:
                  - port: 443

Cluster-wide resources and Rancher Shell interface

For using the Rancher Shell and cluster-wide resources as tenant user, please follow this guide.