Dashboard Plugin

Overview

The original Ceph manager 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.

This new dashboard module is a replacement of the previous one and an ongoing project to add a native web based monitoring and administration application to Ceph Manager.

The architecture and functionality of this module are derived from and inspired by the openATTIC Ceph management and monitoring tool. The development is actively driven by the team behind openATTIC at SUSE.

The intention is to reuse as much of the existing openATTIC functionality as possible, while adapting it to the different environment. While openATTIC is based on Django and the Django REST Framework, 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 dashboard plugin is implemented as a web application that visualizes information and statistics about the Ceph cluster using a web server hosted by ceph-mgr.

The dashboard currently provides the following features to monitor and manage various aspects of your Ceph cluster:

  • Username/password protection: The dashboard can only be accessed by providing a configurable username and password.

  • 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.

  • Overall cluster health: Displays the overall cluster status, storage utilization (e.g. number of objects, raw capacity, usage per pool), a list of pools and their status and usage statistics.

  • Cluster logs: Display the latest updates to the cluster’s event and audit log files.

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

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

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

  • Configuration Reference: Lists all available configuration options, their description and default values.

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

  • OSDs: Lists 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.

  • iSCSI: Lists all hosts that run the TCMU runner service, displaying all images and their performance characteristics (read/write ops, traffic).

  • RBD: Lists all RBD images and their properties (size, objects, features). Create, copy, modify and delete RBD images. Create, delete and rollback snapshots of selected images, protect/unprotect these snapshots against modification. Copy or clone snapshots, flatten cloned images.

  • RBD mirroring: Lists all active sync daemons and their status, pools and RBD images including their synchronization state.

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

  • Object Gateway: Lists 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).

Enabling

Within a running Ceph cluster, the dashboard manager module is enabled with:

$ ceph mgr module enable dashboard

This can be automated (e.g. during deployment) by adding the following to ceph.conf:

[mon]
        mgr initial modules = dashboard

Note that mgr initial modules takes a space-separated list of modules, so if you wanted to include other modules in addition to dashboard, just make it a list like so:

mgr initial modules = balancer 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 config-key set mgr mgr/dashboard/crt -i dashboard.crt
$ ceph config-key set mgr mgr/dashboard/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 config-key set mgr/dashboard/$name/crt -i dashboard.crt
$ ceph config-key set mgr/dashboard/$name/key -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

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

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 define a username and password, which will be stored in the MON’s configuration database:

$ ceph dashboard set-login-credentials <username> <password>

The password will be stored in the configuration database in encrypted form using bcrypt. This is a global setting that applies to all dashboard instances.

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 module:

$ ceph dashboard set-rgw-api-access-key <access_key>
$ ceph dashboard set-rgw-api-secret-key <secret_key>

This is all you have to do to get the Object Gateway management functionality working. The host and port of the Object Gateway are determined automatically.

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.

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.

Reverse proxies

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/.