The aim of this project is to provide an more effective mechanism to provision users from LDAP into cloudstack. Currently cloudstack enables LDAP authentication. In this authentication users must be first setup in cloudstack. Once the user is setup in cloudstack they can authenticate using their LDAP username and password. This project will improve Cloudstack LDAP integration by enabling users be setup automatically using their LDAP credentials.
A detailed version of the proposal is available at: http://ianduffy.ie/cloudstack-ldap.pdf
I have created a blogspot blog in order to document progress made with the project.
Within the community bonding period learning was focused on how to do things "The apache way". This required getting used to communication over the mailing list, becoming equated with our mentor, learning to use git, adding documentation to the project and finally creating a patch that was submitted to the review board.
During this stage I did a lot of research. I setup my cloudstack development environment and investigated the current LDAP implementation within Cloudstack.
Along with this I exploded the testing framework developed for Cloudstack.
During the code stage I began to investigate the current LDAP implementation. This includes:
After reviewing this code and implementation for some time I realised that it wasn't the most maintainable code. I realised I could existed if required but it would involve creating more unmaintainable code and it would be messy, which goes against my own principles of developing quality. This made me make the steep but justified decision to completely redo the LDAP implementation within Cloudstack. By doing this I did chance the scope of the project but it was justified for ease of expansion.
I began to research the most appropriate way of structuring this. I started of by redoing the implementation. This meant creating the following classes(Excluding DAOs):
LdapManager - Manages all LDAP connections
LdapConfiguration - Supplies all configuration from within the Cloudstack database or defaults where required.
LdapUserManager - Handles any interaction with LDAP user information.
LdapUtils - Supplies static helpers, e.g. escape search queries, get attributes from search queries.
LdapContextFactory - Manages the creation of contexts.
LdapAuthenticator - Supplies an authenticator to Cloudstack using the LdapManager.
From this I had a solid foundation for creating API commands to allow the user to interact with an LDAP server. I went on to create the following commands:
Along with this global configuration options were added to global configuration this includes:
With this implementation I believe it allows for a much more extendable and flexible approach. The whole implementation is abstracted from the Cloudstack codebase using the "plugin" model. This allows all of the LDAP features to be contained within one place. Along with this the implementation supplies a good foundation. A side affect of redoing the implementation allowed me to add support for multiple LDAP servers. This means failover is support, so for example, if you have a standard ActiveDirectory with primary and secondary domain controller. Both can be added to Cloudstack which will allow it to fall over to either one assume one is down.
The API changes required me to update the UI interface within Cloudstack. With the improved API implementation this was easier. The Global Settings -> Ldap Configuration page has support for multiple LDAP servers however it only requires a hostname and port. All "global" ldap settings are set within the global settings page.