Security for Smart Cache Service Grid

This is an introduction to data grid security, where it fits in the data grid architecture, which components can be secured, and how to configure and customize the security depending on your application security requirements. Data grid Security provides comprehensive support for securing your data and services.

Securing Data Grid Components

This security feature is only available with the commercial (licensed) editions.

Data grid has security built over the major component, GSA Grid Service Agent. This is a process manager that can spawn and manage Service Grid processes (Operating System level processes) such as The Grid Service Manager, The Grid Service Container, and The Lookup Service. Typically, the GSA is started with the hosting machine's startup. Using the agent, you can bootstrap the entire cluster very easily, and start and stop additional GSCs, GSMs and lookup services at will., GSM Grid Service Manager. This is is a service grid component that manages a set of Grid Service Containers (GSCs). A GSM has an API for deploying/undeploying Processing Units. When a GSM is instructed to deploy a Processing Unit, it finds an appropriate, available GSC and tells that GSC to run an instance of that Processing Unit. It then continuously monitors that Processing Unit instance to verify that it is alive, and that the SLA is not breached., GSC Grid Service Container. This provides an isolated runtime for one (or more) processing unit (PU) instance and exposes its state to the GSM. and Processing Unit This is the unit of packaging and deployment in the GigaSpaces Data Grid, and is essentially the main GigaSpaces service. The Processing Unit (PU) itself is typically deployed onto the Service Grid. When a Processing Unit is deployed, a Processing Unit instance is the actual runtime entity. with Space Where GigaSpaces data is stored. It is the logical cache that holds data objects in memory and might also hold them in layered in tiering. Data is hosted from multiple SoRs, consolidated as a unified data model. data. Each one of these components can be configured according to your application security requirements.

For information about Authentication, Authorization and Security Roles (Privileges) refer to the Security Overview page.

Managing Roles - FSM Based Security (GS-UI)

You can create new roles and users with a configuration file or with the Admin UI. Here is an example how you use the Admin UI to create/update roles. Lets create a role called "training" that can access and interact with our xapTutorialSpace, but does not have monitoring authority. Start the Admin UI:

GS_HOME\bin\gs-ui.sh

The default username and password for the security are admin/admin.

You may have noticed that you can assign fine grained access control for space operations (read/write/etc) per space class(slide 4).

Managing Users and Roles - File Based Security (GS-UI)

A user is assigned roles. You can create new roles and users with a configuration file or with the Admin UI. Here is an example how you use the Admin UI to create/update users. Lets create a user called student and assign the role training we have just created in the step above. A user can have multiple roles.

You can create Users and Roles via the API. Here is an example:

public void createUser() {
    Properties securityProperties = new Properties();
    SecurityManager securityManager = SecurityFactory
        .createSecurityManager(securityProperties);

    directoryManager = securityManager.createDirectoryManager(new User(
            "admin", "admin"));
    // Create a new Role
    this.createRole();
    // Create the User
    User user = new User("student", "student123", new RoleAuthority("training"));
    // Register the new User
    UserManager userManager = directoryManager.getUserManager();
    userManager.createUser(user);
}

private Role createRole() {
   RoleManager roleManager = directoryManager.getRoleManager();

   Role role = new Role("training",
    new SpaceAuthority(SpacePrivilege.READ),
        new SpaceAuthority(SpacePrivilege.WRITE),
        new SpaceAuthority(SpacePrivilege.TAKE));

  roleManager.createRole(role);
  return role;
}

How to Access a Secured Space

A secured embedded Space protects access (to data) which is granted only to users with sufficient privileges. Here is an example how to create a secure space with no internal services:.

EmbeddedSpaceConfigurer configurer = new EmbeddedSpaceConfigurer("xapTutorialSpace").secured(true);
GigaSpace gigaSpace = new GigaSpaceConfigurer(configurer).gigaSpace();

<os-core:embedded-space id="space" space-name="xapTutorialSpace">
    <os-core:security secured="true" />
</os-core:space>

When a remote Space proxy connects to a secured Space, it must provide security credentials (username and password).

public void setupSpace()
{
   SpaceProxyConfigurer configurer = new SpaceProxyConfigurer("xapTutorialSpace").credentials("student", "password");
   GigaSpace gigaSpace = new GigaSpaceConfigurer(configurer).gigaSpace();
}

<os-core:space-proxy id="space" space-name="xapTutorialSpace">
    <os-core:security username="student" password="student123" />
</os-core:space-proxy>

Grid Security

Grid Security is enabled in data grid by setting a global system property. This system property can be set when using the deployment scripts, or it can be appended in the setenv.sh/bat script in the GS_HOME/bin directory. Once the Grid Security is enabled, you can use the predefined roles and user names to protect and control the grid access.

-Dcom.gs.security.enabled=true

This property affects the GSA, GSM, GSC and standalone PU This is the unit of packaging and deployment in the GigaSpaces Data Grid, and is essentially the main GigaSpaces service. The Processing Unit (PU) itself is typically deployed onto the Service Grid. When a Processing Unit is deployed, a Processing Unit instance is the actual runtime entity. instances with a space.

Transport Security

The transport layer can be secured using an SSL communication filter.