Ceph Dashboard

Overview

The Ceph Dashboard is a built-in web-based Ceph management and monitoring application to administer various aspects and objects of the cluster. It is implemented as a Ceph Manager Daemon module.

The original Ceph Dashboard that was shipped with Ceph Luminous started out as a simple read-only view into various run-time information and performance data of a Ceph cluster. It used a very simple architecture to achieve the original goal. However, there was a growing demand for adding more web-based management capabilities, to make it easier to administer Ceph for users that prefer a WebUI over using the command line.

The new Ceph Dashboard module is a replacement of the previous one and adds a built-in web based monitoring and administration application to the Ceph Manager. The architecture and functionality of this new plugin is derived from and inspired by the openATTIC Ceph management and monitoring tool. The development is actively driven by the team behind openATTIC at SUSE, with a lot of support from companies like Red Hat and other members of the Ceph community.

The dashboard module’s backend code uses the CherryPy framework and a custom REST API implementation. The WebUI implementation is based on Angular/TypeScript, merging both functionality from the original dashboard as well as adding new functionality originally developed for the standalone version of openATTIC. The Ceph Dashboard module is implemented as a web application that visualizes information and statistics about the Ceph cluster using a web server hosted by ceph-mgr.

Feature Overview

The dashboard provides the following features:

  • Multi-User and Role Management: The dashboard supports multiple user accounts with different permissions (roles). The user accounts and roles can be modified on both the command line and via the WebUI. See User and Role Management for details.

  • Single Sign-On (SSO): the dashboard supports authentication via an external identity provider using the SAML 2.0 protocol. See Enabling Single Sign-On (SSO) for details.

  • SSL/TLS support: All HTTP communication between the web browser and the dashboard is secured via SSL. A self-signed certificate can be created with a built-in command, but it’s also possible to import custom certificates signed and issued by a CA. See SSL/TLS Support for details.

  • Auditing: the dashboard backend can be configured to log all PUT, POST and DELETE API requests in the Ceph audit log. See Auditing API Requests for instructions on how to enable this feature.

  • Internationalization (I18N): the dashboard can be used in different languages that can be selected at run-time.

Currently, Ceph Dashboard is capable of monitoring and managing the following aspects of your Ceph cluster:

  • Overall cluster health: Display overall cluster status, performance and capacity metrics.

  • Embedded Grafana Dashboards: Ceph Dashboard is capable of embedding Grafana dashboards in many locations, to display additional information and performance metrics gathered by the Prometheus Module. See Enabling the Embedding of Grafana Dashboards for details on how to configure this functionality.

  • Cluster logs: Display the latest updates to the cluster’s event and audit log files. Log entries can be filtered by priority, date or keyword.

  • Hosts: Display a list of all hosts associated to the cluster, which services are running and which version of Ceph is installed.

  • Performance counters: Display detailed service-specific statistics for each running service.

  • Monitors: List all MONs, their quorum status, open sessions.

  • Monitoring: Enables creation, re-creation, editing and expiration of Prometheus’ Silences, lists the alerting configuration of Prometheus and currently firing alerts. Also shows notifications for firing alerts. Needs configuration.

  • Configuration Editor: Display all available configuration options, their description, type and default values and edit the current values.

  • Pools: List all Ceph pools and their details (e.g. applications, placement groups, replication size, EC profile, CRUSH ruleset, etc.)

  • OSDs: List all OSDs, their status and usage statistics as well as detailed information like attributes (OSD map), metadata, performance counters and usage histograms for read/write operations. Mark OSDs up/down/out, purge and reweight OSDs, perform scrub operations, modify various scrub-related configuration options, select different profiles to adjust the level of backfilling activity.

  • iSCSI: List all hosts that run the TCMU runner service, display all images and their performance characteristics (read/write ops, traffic). Create, modify and delete iSCSI targets (via ceph-iscsi). See Enabling iSCSI Management for instructions on how to configure this feature.

  • RBD: List all RBD images and their properties (size, objects, features). Create, copy, modify and delete RBD images. Define various I/O or bandwidth limitation settings on a global, per-pool or per-image level. Create, delete and rollback snapshots of selected images, protect/unprotect these snapshots against modification. Copy or clone snapshots, flatten cloned images.

  • RBD mirroring: Enable and configure RBD mirroring to a remote Ceph server. Lists all active sync daemons and their status, pools and RBD images including their synchronization state.

  • CephFS: List all active filesystem clients and associated pools, including their usage statistics.

  • Object Gateway: List all active object gateways and their performance counters. Display and manage (add/edit/delete) object gateway users and their details (e.g. quotas) as well as the users’ buckets and their details (e.g. owner, quotas). See Enabling the Object Gateway Management Frontend for configuration instructions.

  • NFS: Manage NFS exports of CephFS filesystems and RGW S3 buckets via NFS Ganesha. See NFS-Ganesha Management for details on how to enable this functionality.

  • Ceph Manager Modules: Enable and disable all Ceph Manager modules, change the module-specific configuration settings.

Supported Browsers

Ceph Dashboard is primarily tested and developed using the following web browsers:

Browser

Versions

Chrome

68+

Firefox

61+

While Ceph Dashboard might work in older browsers, we cannot guarantee it and recommend you to update your browser to the latest version.

Enabling

If you have installed ceph-mgr-dashboard from distribution packages, the package management system should have taken care of installing all the required dependencies.

If you’re installing Ceph from source and want to start the dashboard from your development environment, please see the files README.rst and HACKING.rst in directory src/pybind/mgr/dashboard of the source code.

Within a running Ceph cluster, the Ceph Dashboard is enabled with:

$ ceph mgr module enable dashboard

Configuration

SSL/TLS Support

All HTTP connections to the dashboard are secured with SSL/TLS by default.

To get the dashboard up and running quickly, you can generate and install a self-signed certificate using the following built-in command:

$ ceph dashboard create-self-signed-cert

Note that most web browsers will complain about such self-signed certificates and require explicit confirmation before establishing a secure connection to the dashboard.

To properly secure a deployment and to remove the certificate warning, a certificate that is issued by a certificate authority (CA) should be used.

For example, a key pair can be generated with a command similar to:

$ openssl req -new -nodes -x509 \
  -subj "/O=IT/CN=ceph-mgr-dashboard" -days 3650 \
  -keyout dashboard.key -out dashboard.crt -extensions v3_ca

The dashboard.crt file should then be signed by a CA. Once that is done, you can enable it for all Ceph manager instances by running the following commands:

$ ceph dashboard set-ssl-certificate -i dashboard.crt
$ ceph dashboard set-ssl-certificate-key -i dashboard.key

If different certificates are desired for each manager instance for some reason, the name of the instance can be included as follows (where $name is the name of the ceph-mgr instance, usually the hostname):

$ ceph dashboard set-ssl-certificate $name -i dashboard.crt
$ ceph dashboard set-ssl-certificate-key $name -i dashboard.key

SSL can also be disabled by setting this configuration value:

$ ceph config set mgr mgr/dashboard/ssl false

This might be useful if the dashboard will be running behind a proxy which does not support SSL for its upstream servers or other situations where SSL is not wanted or required.

Warning

Use caution when disabling SSL as usernames and passwords will be sent to the dashboard unencrypted.

Note

You need to restart the Ceph manager processes manually after changing the SSL certificate and key. This can be accomplished by either running ceph mgr fail mgr or by disabling and re-enabling the dashboard module (which also triggers the manager to respawn itself):

$ ceph mgr module disable dashboard
$ ceph mgr module enable dashboard

Host Name and Port

Like most web applications, dashboard binds to a TCP/IP address and TCP port.

By default, the ceph-mgr daemon hosting the dashboard (i.e., the currently active manager) will bind to TCP port 8443 or 8080 when SSL is disabled.

If no specific address has been configured, the web app will bind to ::, which corresponds to all available IPv4 and IPv6 addresses.

These defaults can be changed via the configuration key facility on a cluster-wide level (so they apply to all manager instances) as follows:

$ ceph config set mgr mgr/dashboard/server_addr $IP
$ ceph config set mgr mgr/dashboard/server_port $PORT
$ ceph config set mgr mgr/dashboard/ssl_server_port $PORT

Since each ceph-mgr hosts its own instance of dashboard, it may also be necessary to configure them separately. The IP address and port for a specific manager instance can be changed with the following commands:

$ ceph config set mgr mgr/dashboard/$name/server_addr $IP
$ ceph config set mgr mgr/dashboard/$name/server_port $PORT
$ ceph config set mgr mgr/dashboard/$name/ssl_server_port $PORT

Replace $name with the ID of the ceph-mgr instance hosting the dashboard web app.

Note

The command ceph mgr services will show you all endpoints that are currently configured. Look for the dashboard key to obtain the URL for accessing the dashboard.

Username and Password

In order to be able to log in, you need to create a user account and associate it with at least one role. We provide a set of predefined system roles that you can use. For more details please refer to the User and Role Management section.

To create a user with the administrator role you can use the following commands:

$ ceph dashboard ac-user-create <username> -i <file-containing-password> administrator

Enabling the Object Gateway Management Frontend

To use the Object Gateway management functionality of the dashboard, you will need to provide the login credentials of a user with the system flag enabled.

If you do not have a user which shall be used for providing those credentials, you will also need to create one:

$ radosgw-admin user create --uid=<user_id> --display-name=<display_name> \
    --system

Take note of the keys access_key and secret_key in the output of this command.

The credentials of an existing user can also be obtained by using radosgw-admin:

$ radosgw-admin user info --uid=<user_id>

Finally, provide the credentials to the dashboard:

$ ceph dashboard set-rgw-api-access-key -i <file-containing-access-key>
$ ceph dashboard set-rgw-api-secret-key -i <file-containing-secret-key>

In a typical default configuration with a single RGW endpoint, this is all you have to do to get the Object Gateway management functionality working. The dashboard will try to automatically determine the host and port of the Object Gateway by obtaining this information from the Ceph Manager’s service map.

If multiple zones are used, it will automatically determine the host within the master zone group and master zone. This should be sufficient for most setups, but in some circumstances you might want to set the host and port manually:

$ ceph dashboard set-rgw-api-host <host>
$ ceph dashboard set-rgw-api-port <port>

In addition to the settings mentioned so far, the following settings do also exist and you may find yourself in the situation that you have to use them:

$ ceph dashboard set-rgw-api-scheme <scheme>  # http or https
$ ceph dashboard set-rgw-api-admin-resource <admin_resource>
$ ceph dashboard set-rgw-api-user-id <user_id>

If you are using a self-signed certificate in your Object Gateway setup, then you should disable certificate verification in the dashboard to avoid refused connections, e.g. caused by certificates signed by unknown CA or not matching the host name:

$ ceph dashboard set-rgw-api-ssl-verify False

If the Object Gateway takes too long to process requests and the dashboard runs into timeouts, then you can set the timeout value to your needs:

$ ceph dashboard set-rest-requests-timeout <seconds>

The default value is 45 seconds.

Enabling iSCSI Management

The Ceph Dashboard can manage iSCSI targets using the REST API provided by the rbd-target-api service of the Ceph iSCSI Gateway. Please make sure that it’s installed and enabled on the iSCSI gateways.

Note

The iSCSI management functionality of Ceph Dashboard depends on the latest version 3 of the ceph-iscsi project. Make sure that your operating system provides the correct version, otherwise the dashboard won’t enable the management features.

If ceph-iscsi REST API is configured in HTTPS mode and its using a self-signed certificate, then you need to configure the dashboard to avoid SSL certificate verification when accessing ceph-iscsi API.

To disable API SSL verification run the following commmand:

$ ceph dashboard set-iscsi-api-ssl-verification false

The available iSCSI gateways must be defined using the following commands:

$ ceph dashboard iscsi-gateway-list
$ # Gateway URL format for a new gateway: <scheme>://<username>:<password>@<host>[:port]
$ ceph dashboard iscsi-gateway-add -i <file-containing-gateway-url> [<gateway_name>]
$ ceph dashboard iscsi-gateway-rm <gateway_name>

Enabling the Embedding of Grafana Dashboards

Grafana requires data from Prometheus. Although Grafana can use other data sources, the Grafana dashboards we provide contain queries that are specific to Prometheus. Our Grafana dashboards therefore require Prometheus as the data source. The Ceph Prometheus Module also only exports its data in the Prometheus’ common format. The Grafana dashboards rely on metric names from the Prometheus module and Node exporter. The Node exporter is a separate application that provides machine metrics.

Note

Prometheus’ security model presumes that untrusted users have access to the Prometheus HTTP endpoint and logs. Untrusted users have access to all the (meta)data Prometheus collects that is contained in the database, plus a variety of operational and debugging information.

However, Prometheus’ HTTP API is limited to read-only operations. Configurations can not be changed using the API and secrets are not exposed. Moreover, Prometheus has some built-in measures to mitigate the impact of denial of service attacks.

Please see Prometheus’ Security model <https://prometheus.io/docs/operating/security/> for more detailed information.

Grafana and Prometheus are likely going to be bundled and installed by some orchestration tools along Ceph in the near future, but currently, you will have to install and configure both manually. After you have installed Prometheus and Grafana on your preferred hosts, proceed with the following steps.

  1. Enable the Ceph Exporter which comes as Ceph Manager module by running:

    $ ceph mgr module enable prometheus
    

More details can be found in the documentation of the Prometheus Module.

  1. Add the corresponding scrape configuration to Prometheus. This may look like:

    global:
      scrape_interval: 5s
    
    scrape_configs:
      - job_name: 'prometheus'
        static_configs:
          - targets: ['localhost:9090']
      - job_name: 'ceph'
        static_configs:
          - targets: ['localhost:9283']
      - job_name: 'node-exporter'
        static_configs:
          - targets: ['localhost:9100']
    
  2. Add Prometheus as data source to Grafana

  3. Install the vonage-status-panel and grafana-piechart-panel plugins using:

    grafana-cli plugins install vonage-status-panel
    grafana-cli plugins install grafana-piechart-panel
    
  4. Add the Dashboards to Grafana:

    Dashboards can be added to Grafana by importing dashboard jsons. Following command can be used for downloading json files:

    wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ceph/ceph/master/monitoring/grafana/dashboards/<Dashboard-name>.json
    

    You can find all the dashboard jsons here .

    For Example, for ceph-cluster overview you can use:

    wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ceph/ceph/master/monitoring/grafana/dashboards/ceph-cluster.json
    
  5. Configure Grafana in /etc/grafana/grafana.ini to adapt anonymous mode:

    [auth.anonymous]
    enabled = true
    org_name = Main Org.
    org_role = Viewer
    

After you have set up Grafana and Prometheus, you will need to configure the connection information that the Ceph Dashboard will use to access Grafana.

You need to tell the dashboard on which URL the Grafana instance is running/deployed:

$ ceph dashboard set-grafana-api-url <grafana-server-url>  # default: ''

The format of url is : <protocol>:<IP-address>:<port>

Note

Ceph Dashboard embeds the Grafana dashboards via iframe HTML elements. If Grafana is configured without SSL/TLS support, most browsers will block the embedding of insecure content into a secured web page, if the SSL support in the dashboard has been enabled (which is the default configuration). If you can’t see the embedded Grafana dashboards after enabling them as outlined above, check your browser’s documentation on how to unblock mixed content. Alternatively, consider enabling SSL/TLS support in Grafana.

If you are using a self-signed certificate in your Grafana setup, then you should disable certificate verification in the dashboard to avoid refused connections, e.g. caused by certificates signed by unknown CA or not matching the host name:

$ ceph dashboard set-grafana-api-ssl-verify False

You can directly access Grafana Instance as well to monitor your cluster.

Alternative URL for Browsers

The Ceph Dashboard backend requires the Grafana URL to be able to verify the existence of Grafana Dashboards before the frontend even loads them. Due to the nature of how Grafana is implemented in Ceph Dashboard, this means that two working connections are required in order to be able to see Grafana graphs in Ceph Dashboard:

  • The backend (Ceph Mgr module) needs to verify the existence of the requested graph. If this request succeeds, it lets the frontend know that it can safely access Grafana.

  • The frontend then requests the Grafana graphs directly from the user’s browser using an iframe. The Grafana instance is accessed directly without any detour through Ceph Dashboard.

Now, it might be the case that your environment makes it difficult for the user’s browser to directly access the URL configured in Ceph Dashboard. To solve this issue, a separate URL can be configured which will solely be used to tell the frontend (the user’s browser) which URL it should use to access Grafana.

To change the URL that is returned to the frontend issue the following command:

$ ceph dashboard set-grafana-frontend-api-url <grafana-server-url>

If no value is set for that option, it will simply fall back to the value of the GRAFANA_API_URL option. If set, it will instruct the browser to use this URL to access Grafana.

Enabling Single Sign-On (SSO)

The Ceph Dashboard supports external authentication of users via the SAML 2.0 protocol. You need to create the user accounts and associate them with the desired roles first, as authorization is still performed by the Dashboard. However, the authentication process can be performed by an existing Identity Provider (IdP).

Note

Ceph Dashboard SSO support relies on onelogin’s python-saml library. Please ensure that this library is installed on your system, either by using your distribution’s package management or via Python’s pip installer.

To configure SSO on Ceph Dashboard, you should use the following command:

$ ceph dashboard sso setup saml2 <ceph_dashboard_base_url> <idp_metadata> {<idp_username_attribute>} {<idp_entity_id>} {<sp_x_509_cert>} {<sp_private_key>}

Parameters:

  • <ceph_dashboard_base_url>: Base URL where Ceph Dashboard is accessible (e.g., https://cephdashboard.local)

  • <idp_metadata>: URL, file path or content of the IdP metadata XML (e.g., https://myidp/metadata)

  • <idp_username_attribute> (optional): Attribute that should be used to get the username from the authentication response. Defaults to uid.

  • <idp_entity_id> (optional): Use this when more than one entity id exists on the IdP metadata.

  • <sp_x_509_cert> / <sp_private_key> (optional): File path or content of the certificate that should be used by Ceph Dashboard (Service Provider) for signing and encryption.

Note

The issuer value of SAML requests will follow this pattern: <ceph_dashboard_base_url>/auth/saml2/metadata

To display the current SAML 2.0 configuration, use the following command:

$ ceph dashboard sso show saml2

Note

For more information about onelogin_settings, please check the onelogin documentation.

To disable SSO:

$ ceph dashboard sso disable

To check if SSO is enabled:

$ ceph dashboard sso status

To enable SSO:

$ ceph dashboard sso enable saml2

Enabling Prometheus Alerting

Using Prometheus for monitoring, you have to define alerting rules. To manage them you need to use the Alertmanager. If you are not using the Alertmanager yet, please install it as it’s mandatory in order to receive and manage alerts from Prometheus.

The Alertmanager capabilities can be consumed by the dashboard in three different ways:

  1. Use the notification receiver of the dashboard.

  2. Use the Prometheus Alertmanager API.

  3. Use both sources simultaneously.

All three methods are going to notify you about alerts. You won’t be notified twice if you use both sources, but you need to consume at least the Alertmanager API in order to manage silences.

  1. Use the notification receiver of the dashboard:

    This allows you to get notifications as configured from the Alertmanager. You will get notified inside the dashboard once a notification is send out, but you are not able to manage alerts.

    Add the dashboard receiver and the new route to your Alertmanager configuration. This should look like:

    route:
      receiver: 'ceph-dashboard'
    ...
    receivers:
      - name: 'ceph-dashboard'
        webhook_configs:
        - url: '<url-to-dashboard>/api/prometheus_receiver'
    

    Please make sure that the Alertmanager considers your SSL certificate in terms of the dashboard as valid. For more information about the correct configuration checkout the <http_config> documentation.

  2. Use the API of Prometheus and the Alertmanager

    This allows you to manage alerts and silences. This will enable the “Active Alerts”, “All Alerts” as well as the “Silences” tabs in the “Monitoring” section of the “Cluster” menu entry.

    Alerts can be sorted by name, job, severity, state and start time. Unfortunately it’s not possible to know when an alert was sent out through a notification by the Alertmanager based on your configuration, that’s why the dashboard will notify the user on any visible change to an alert and will notify the changed alert.

    Silences can be sorted by id, creator, status, start, updated and end time. Silences can be created in various ways, it’s also possible to expire them.

    1. Create from scratch

    2. Based on a selected alert

    3. Recreate from expired silence

    4. Update a silence (which will recreate and expire it (default Alertmanager behaviour))

    To use it, specify the host and port of the Alertmanager server:

    $ ceph dashboard set-alertmanager-api-host <alertmanager-host:port>  # default: ''
    

    For example:

    $ ceph dashboard set-alertmanager-api-host 'http://localhost:9093'
    

    To be able to see all configured alerts, you will need to configure the URL to the Prometheus API. Using this API, the UI will also help you in verifying that a new silence will match a corresponding alert.

    $ ceph dashboard set-prometheus-api-host <prometheus-host:port>  # default: ''
    

    For example:

    $ ceph dashboard set-prometheus-api-host 'http://localhost:9090'
    

    After setting up the hosts, you have to refresh the dashboard in your browser window.

  3. Use both methods

    The different behaviors of both methods are configured in a way that they should not disturb each other through annoying duplicated notifications popping up.

Accessing the Dashboard

You can now access the dashboard using your (JavaScript-enabled) web browser, by pointing it to any of the host names or IP addresses and the selected TCP port where a manager instance is running: e.g., httpS://<$IP>:<$PORT>/.

You should then be greeted by the dashboard login page, requesting your previously defined username and password. Select the Keep me logged in checkbox if you want to skip the username/password request when accessing the dashboard in the future.

User and Role Management

User Accounts

Ceph Dashboard supports managing multiple user accounts. Each user account consists of a username, a password (stored in encrypted form using bcrypt), an optional name, and an optional email address.

User accounts are stored in MON’s configuration database, and are globally shared across all ceph-mgr instances.

We provide a set of CLI commands to manage user accounts:

  • Show User(s):

    $ ceph dashboard ac-user-show [<username>]
    
  • Create User:

    $ ceph dashboard ac-user-create <username> -i <file-containing-password> [<rolename>] [<name>] [<email>]
    
  • Delete User:

    $ ceph dashboard ac-user-delete <username>
    
  • Change Password:

    $ ceph dashboard ac-user-set-password <username> -i <file-containing-password>
    
  • Modify User (name, and email):

    $ ceph dashboard ac-user-set-info <username> <name> <email>
    

User Roles and Permissions

User accounts are also associated with a set of roles that define which dashboard functionality can be accessed by the user.

The Dashboard functionality/modules are grouped within a security scope. Security scopes are predefined and static. The current available security scopes are:

  • hosts: includes all features related to the Hosts menu entry.

  • config-opt: includes all features related to management of Ceph configuration options.

  • pool: includes all features related to pool management.

  • osd: includes all features related to OSD management.

  • monitor: includes all features related to Monitor management.

  • rbd-image: includes all features related to RBD image management.

  • rbd-mirroring: includes all features related to RBD-Mirroring management.

  • iscsi: includes all features related to iSCSI management.

  • rgw: includes all features related to Rados Gateway management.

  • cephfs: includes all features related to CephFS management.

  • manager: include all features related to Ceph Manager management.

  • log: include all features related to Ceph logs management.

  • grafana: include all features related to Grafana proxy.

  • prometheus: include all features related to Prometheus alert management.

  • dashboard-settings: allows to change dashboard settings.

A role specifies a set of mappings between a security scope and a set of permissions. There are four types of permissions:

  • read

  • create

  • update

  • delete

See below for an example of a role specification based on a Python dictionary:

# example of a role
{
  'role': 'my_new_role',
  'description': 'My new role',
  'scopes_permissions': {
    'pool': ['read', 'create'],
    'rbd-image': ['read', 'create', 'update', 'delete']
  }
}

The above role dictates that a user has read and create permissions for features related to pool management, and has full permissions for features related to RBD image management.

The Dashboard already provides a set of predefined roles that we call system roles, and can be used right away in a fresh Ceph Dashboard installation.

The list of system roles are:

  • administrator: provides full permissions for all security scopes.

  • read-only: provides read permission for all security scopes except the dashboard settings.

  • block-manager: provides full permissions for rbd-image, rbd-mirroring, and iscsi scopes.

  • rgw-manager: provides full permissions for the rgw scope

  • cluster-manager: provides full permissions for the hosts, osd, monitor, manager, and config-opt scopes.

  • pool-manager: provides full permissions for the pool scope.

  • cephfs-manager: provides full permissions for the cephfs scope.

The list of currently available roles can be retrieved by the following command:

$ ceph dashboard ac-role-show [<rolename>]

It is also possible to create new roles using CLI commands. The available commands to manage roles are the following:

  • Create Role:

    $ ceph dashboard ac-role-create <rolename> [<description>]
    
  • Delete Role:

    $ ceph dashboard ac-role-delete <rolename>
    
  • Add Scope Permissions to Role:

    $ ceph dashboard ac-role-add-scope-perms <rolename> <scopename> <permission> [<permission>...]
    
  • Delete Scope Permission from Role:

    $ ceph dashboard ac-role-del-perms <rolename> <scopename>
    

To associate roles to users, the following CLI commands are available:

  • Set User Roles:

    $ ceph dashboard ac-user-set-roles <username> <rolename> [<rolename>...]
    
  • Add Roles To User:

    $ ceph dashboard ac-user-add-roles <username> <rolename> [<rolename>...]
    
  • Delete Roles from User:

    $ ceph dashboard ac-user-del-roles <username> <rolename> [<rolename>...]
    

Example of User and Custom Role Creation

In this section we show a full example of the commands that need to be used in order to create a user account, that should be able to manage RBD images, view and create Ceph pools, and have read-only access to any other scopes.

  1. Create the user:

    $ ceph dashboard ac-user-create bob -i <file-containing-password>
    
  2. Create role and specify scope permissions:

    $ ceph dashboard ac-role-create rbd/pool-manager
    $ ceph dashboard ac-role-add-scope-perms rbd/pool-manager rbd-image read create update delete
    $ ceph dashboard ac-role-add-scope-perms rbd/pool-manager pool read create
    
  3. Associate roles to user:

    $ ceph dashboard ac-user-set-roles bob rbd/pool-manager read-only
    

Proxy Configuration

In a Ceph cluster with multiple ceph-mgr instances, only the dashboard running on the currently active ceph-mgr daemon will serve incoming requests. Accessing the dashboard’s TCP port on any of the other ceph-mgr instances that are currently on standby will perform a HTTP redirect (303) to the currently active manager’s dashboard URL. This way, you can point your browser to any of the ceph-mgr instances in order to access the dashboard.

If you want to establish a fixed URL to reach the dashboard or if you don’t want to allow direct connections to the manager nodes, you could set up a proxy that automatically forwards incoming requests to the currently active ceph-mgr instance.

Configuring a URL Prefix

If you are accessing the dashboard via a reverse proxy configuration, you may wish to service it under a URL prefix. To get the dashboard to use hyperlinks that include your prefix, you can set the url_prefix setting:

ceph config set mgr mgr/dashboard/url_prefix $PREFIX

so you can access the dashboard at http://$IP:$PORT/$PREFIX/.

Disable the redirection

If the dashboard is behind a load-balancing proxy like HAProxy you might want to disable the redirection behaviour to prevent situations that internal (unresolvable) URL’s are published to the frontend client. Use the following command to get the dashboard to respond with a HTTP error (500 by default) instead of redirecting to the active dashboard:

$ ceph config set mgr mgr/dashboard/standby_behaviour "error"

To reset the setting to the default redirection behaviour, use the following command:

$ ceph config set mgr mgr/dashboard/standby_behaviour "redirect"

Configure the error status code

When the redirection behaviour is disabled, then you want to customize the HTTP status code of standby dashboards. To do so you need to run the command:

$ ceph config set mgr mgr/dashboard/standby_error_status_code 503

HAProxy example configuration

Below you will find an example configuration for SSL/TLS pass through using HAProxy.

Please note that the configuration works under the following conditions. If the dashboard fails over, the front-end client might receive a HTTP redirect (303) response and will be redirected to an unresolvable host. This happens when the failover occurs during two HAProxy health checks. In this situation the previously active dashboard node will now respond with a 303 which points to the new active node. To prevent that situation you should consider to disable the redirection behaviour on standby nodes.

defaults
  log global
  option log-health-checks
  timeout connect 5s
  timeout client 50s
  timeout server 450s

frontend dashboard_front
  mode http
  bind *:80
  option httplog
  redirect scheme https code 301 if !{ ssl_fc }

frontend dashboard_front_ssl
  mode tcp
  bind *:443
  option tcplog
  default_backend dashboard_back_ssl

backend dashboard_back_ssl
  mode tcp
  option httpchk GET /
  http-check expect status 200
  server x <HOST>:<PORT> check-ssl check verify none
  server y <HOST>:<PORT> check-ssl check verify none
  server z <HOST>:<PORT> check-ssl check verify none

Auditing API Requests

The REST API is capable of logging PUT, POST and DELETE requests to the Ceph audit log. This feature is disabled by default, but can be enabled with the following command:

$ ceph dashboard set-audit-api-enabled <true|false>

If enabled, the following parameters are logged per each request:

  • from - The origin of the request, e.g. https://[::1]:44410

  • path - The REST API path, e.g. /api/auth

  • method - e.g. PUT, POST or DELETE

  • user - The name of the user, otherwise ‘None’

The logging of the request payload (the arguments and their values) is enabled by default. Execute the following command to disable this behaviour:

$ ceph dashboard set-audit-api-log-payload <true|false>

A log entry may look like this:

2018-10-22 15:27:01.302514 mgr.x [INF] [DASHBOARD] from='https://[::ffff:127.0.0.1]:37022' path='/api/rgw/user/klaus' method='PUT' user='admin' params='{"max_buckets": "1000", "display_name": "Klaus Mustermann", "uid": "klaus", "suspended": "0", "email": "klaus.mustermann@ceph.com"}'

NFS-Ganesha Management

Ceph Dashboard can manage NFS Ganesha exports that use CephFS or RadosGW as their backstore.

To enable this feature in Ceph Dashboard there are some assumptions that need to be met regarding the way NFS-Ganesha services are configured.

The dashboard manages NFS-Ganesha config files stored in RADOS objects on the Ceph Cluster. NFS-Ganesha must store part of their configuration in the Ceph cluster.

These configuration files must follow some conventions. conventions. Each export block must be stored in its own RADOS object named export-<id>, where <id> must match the Export_ID attribute of the export configuration. Then, for each NFS-Ganesha service daemon there should exist a RADOS object named conf-<daemon_id>, where <daemon_id> is an arbitrary string that should uniquely identify the daemon instance (e.g., the hostname where the daemon is running). Each conf-<daemon_id> object contains the RADOS URLs to the exports that the NFS-Ganesha daemon should serve. These URLs are of the form:

%url rados://<pool_name>[/<namespace>]/export-<id>

Both the conf-<daemon_id> and export-<id> objects must be stored in the same RADOS pool/namespace.

Configuring NFS-Ganesha in the Dashboard

To enable the management of NFS-Ganesha exports in Ceph Dashboard, we only need to tell the Dashboard, in which RADOS pool and namespace the configuration objects are stored. Then, Ceph Dashboard can access the objects by following the naming convention described above.

The Dashboard command to configure the NFS-Ganesha configuration objects location is:

$ ceph dashboard set-ganesha-clusters-rados-pool-namespace <pool_name>[/<namespace>]

After running the above command, Ceph Dashboard is able to find the NFS-Ganesha configuration objects and we can start manage the exports through the Web UI.

Support for Multiple NFS-Ganesha Clusters

Ceph Dashboard also supports the management of NFS-Ganesha exports belonging to different NFS-Ganesha clusters. An NFS-Ganesha cluster is a group of NFS-Ganesha service daemons sharing the same exports. Different NFS-Ganesha clusters are independent and don’t share the exports configuration between each other.

Each NFS-Ganesha cluster should store its configuration objects in a different RADOS pool/namespace to isolate the configuration from each other.

To specify the locations of the configuration of each NFS-Ganesha cluster we can use the same command as above but with a different value pattern:

$ ceph dashboard set-ganesha-clusters-rados-pool-namespace <cluster_id>:<pool_name>[/<namespace>](,<cluster_id>:<pool_name>[/<namespace>])*

The <cluster_id> is an arbitrary string that should uniquely identify the NFS-Ganesha cluster.

When configuring the Ceph Dashboard with multiple NFS-Ganesha clusters, the Web UI will automatically allow to choose to which cluster an export belongs.

Plug-ins

Dashboard Plug-ins allow to extend the functionality of the dashboard in a modular and loosely coupled approach.

Feature Toggles

This plug-in allows to enable or disable some features from the Ceph Dashboard on-demand. When a feature becomes disabled:

  • Its front-end elements (web pages, menu entries, charts, etc.) will become hidden.

  • Its associated REST API endpoints will reject any further requests (404, Not Found Error).

The main purpose of this plug-in is to allow ad-hoc customizations of the workflows exposed by the dashboard. Additionally, it could allow for dynamically enabling experimental features with minimal configuration burden and no service impact.

The list of features that can be enabled/disabled is:

  • Block (RBD):
    • Image Management: rbd

    • Mirroring: mirroring

    • iSCSI: iscsi

  • Filesystem (Cephfs): cephfs

  • Objects (RGW): rgw (including daemon, user and bucket management).

By default all features come enabled.

To retrieve a list of features and their current statuses:

$ ceph dashboard feature status
Feature 'cephfs': 'enabled'
Feature 'iscsi': 'enabled'
Feature 'mirroring': 'enabled'
Feature 'rbd': 'enabled'
Feature 'rgw': 'enabled'

To enable or disable the status of a single or multiple features:

$ ceph dashboard feature disable iscsi mirroring
Feature 'iscsi': disabled
Feature 'mirroring': disabled

After a feature status has changed, the API REST endpoints immediately respond to that change, while for the front-end UI elements, it may take up to 20 seconds to reflect it.