Authorization

Redpanda Console uses role-based access control (RBAC) to manage and restrict access to various system resources. This document covers how to configure and use RBAC in Redpanda Console, including binding roles to users.

This feature requires an enterprise license. To get a trial license key or extend your trial period, generate a new trial license key. To purchase a license, contact Redpanda Sales.

If Redpanda Console has enterprise features enabled and it cannot find a valid license either in its local configuration or in the connected Redpanda cluster, it redirects you to the license expiration landing page, and all other access is restricted.

RBAC concepts

RBAC in Redpanda Console allows you to control access to different resources by binding specific roles to users or groups. These roles determine the permissions that users have when interacting with Redpanda Console.

You can assign existing roles (admin, editor, viewer) to individual users or groups from your configured identity providers. Users with multiple roles receive the union of all permissions defined in those roles.

Default roles

Redpanda Console comes with three primitive roles:

Viewer

The viewer role grants permission to view all resources within Redpanda Console. This includes:

  • Viewing all topic data (messages, configs, partitions, using search filters).

  • Viewing all cluster data (node configs, ACLs, service accounts, quotas).

  • Viewing all consumer group data (consumer groups, group offsets, and lags).

  • Viewing all Schema Registry data (registered schemas with their contents).

  • Viewing all Kafka Connect data (list configured clusters and their connectors, including the status and connector configs).

It does not include permissions to view the list of Console users that are allowed to use Redpanda Console.

Editor

The editor role grants all permissions that come with the viewer role and additionally includes:

  • Managing all topic aspects, such as creating topics, editing topic configurations, deleting topics, and publishing and deleting topic records.

  • Managing all cluster configuration aspects, such as editing node or cluster configs.

  • Managing all consumer group aspects, such as editing group offsets or deleting group offsets.

  • Managing all Kafka connect aspects, such as creating/updating/deleting or starting/pausing/stopping connectors.

It does not include permission to create/remove ACLs or to create or remove a service account.

Admin

The admin role grants all permissions that come with the editor role and additionally includes:

  • Access to the Admin page that includes:

  • Managing all service account aspects (create/remove service accounts)

  • Managing all ACL aspects (create/remove ACLs)

Configure roles and role bindings

Both roles and role binding configurations are applied through separate YAML files that Redpanda Console loads at startup. You need to specify the file paths to the roles configuration file and the role bindings configuration file in the main Redpanda Console configuration file. These file paths are set using the rolesFilepath and roleBindingsFilepath options under the enterprise.rbac configuration block.

Here is an example of how to configure these file paths in your Redpanda Console configuration file:

# Path to your redpanda.license file
licenseFilepath: "/etc/redpanda/redpanda.license"
enterprise:
  rbac:
    enabled: true
    roleBindingsFilepath: "/etc/redpanda/role-bindings.yaml"

  • roleBindingsFilepath specifies the path to your role bindings file. This file should contain the role bindings that associate the default roles with specific users or groups.

Ensure that the paths provided are correct and that the Redpanda Console process has read access to these files.

  • The role-bindings.yaml file should be stored in a secure location, with appropriate file permissions to prevent unauthorized access or modification.

  • Regularly review and update the role-bindings.yaml file to ensure that they reflect your organization’s current access control policies.

  • After making changes to this file, restart Redpanda Console to apply the updates.

Role bindings

To grant users the permissions defined in a role, you must bind the role to a user or a group. Each role binding holds a list of subjects (users or groups) and a reference to the role being granted. Optionally, you can add metadata (key-value pairs) which may help you to manage your role bindings. Redpanda Console shows the metadata in the UI, so that it helps you to understand how a specific user received their permissions.

For example, this role binding binds Google account john.doe@redpanda.com to the role named admin:

roleBindings:
  - roleName: admin
    metadata:
      # Metadata properties will be shown in the UI. You can omit it if you want to
      name: Developers
      creator: John Doe
    subjects:
      - kind: user
        provider: Google
        name: john.doe@redpanda.com

Bind roles to groups

If you want to bind roles to a set of users (for example, GitHub teams or Google Groups), you need to configure your identity provider to grant Redpanda Console additional permissions so that it can resolve the memberships of these user sets. For more information about this setup, see the respective identity provider documentation.

All group memberships that are used in role bindings are resolved at startup. Group memberships are cached for 15 minutes. Resolving group memberships proactively is required in order to support nested groups.

This role binding binds all Google accounts which are a member of Google group dev-team-console@redpanda.com to the role named admin. Group memberships are resolved recursively, so that members from nested groups are also considered.

roleBindings:
  - roleName: admin
    metadata:
      # Metadata properties will be shown in the UI. You can omit it if you want to
      name: Developers
      creator: John Doe
    subjects:
      - kind: group
        provider: Google
        name: dev-team-console@redpanda.com

Users who have multiple roles assigned through role bindings will inherit all these roles' permissions.

Subjects

Each subject has three properties that are configurable to bind a role to one or more users:

  • kind: Supported kinds are group and user.

  • provider: One of Google, GitHub, Okta, OIDC, or Plain.

  • name: Depending on your kind and provider, the name property may refer to different things. Here is an overview:

Kind Provider Name Reference

user

Google

Google email address

group

Google

Google Group Name (which is an email address)

user

GitHub

Login handle / GitHub username

group

GitHub

GitHub team name within your GitHub organization

user

Okta

Login handle / email

group

Okta

Okta Group ID (not name), for example "00gra1ajmZa1G1ks04x9"

user

OIDC

Configurable via login.oidc.userIdentifyingClaimKey (by default, it uses the sub claim from the issued access token)

user

Plain

Username as defined in the login.plain.credentials configuration

Multiple roles and duplicate role bindings

Redpanda Console allows you to assign multiple roles to users through role bindings. When a user is associated with more than one role, the user is granted all the permissions defined in each role they are assigned.

For example, if a user is assigned both the viewer and editor roles, they will have all the permissions of a viewer as well as the additional permissions of an editor.

Duplicate role bindings do not cause errors or conflicts. If a user is assigned the same role multiple times through role bindings, the duplicate role bindings do not affect the user’s final set of permissions, which are the same as if the role was assigned once.

Example role bindings

The following role-bindings.yaml configuration file includes a complete list of all roleBindings configuration properties and their descriptions.

roleBindings:
  - roleName: admin
    metadata:
      name: Admin Users
    subjects:
      - kind: user
        provider: OIDC
        name: jane@mycompany.com # Matches the value from the claim key
      - kind: user
        provider: Google
        name: joe@mycompany.com
      - kind: user
        provider: Plain
        name: jane
      - kind: group
        provider: Google
        name: global-admins@mycompany.com # Google workspace group
  - roleName: editor
    metadata:
      name: Editors
    subjects:
      - kind: group
        provider: Okta
        name: 00gcgwvqiwitcrgge696 # Okta Group ID
      - kind: group
        provider: GitHub
        name: engineers # GitHub Team ID
        organization: redpanda-data # GitHub organization name
  - roleName: viewer
    metadata:
      name: Viewers
    subjects:
      - kind: group
        provider: Okta
        name: 00gcgwvqiwitcrgge696 # Okta Group ID
      - kind: user
        provider: GitHub
        name: nat # Refers to the GitHub handle

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