Roles

Overview

Every user in SUSE Observability needs to have a subject and a set of permissions assigned; this combination is called a role. A role describes a group of users that can access a specific data set. SUSE Observability ships with a set of predefined roles and you can also create roles to match your needs.

Predefined roles

There are four roles predefined in SUSE Observability:

  • Administrator - has full access to all views and has all permissions.

  • Power User - typically granted to a user that needs to configure SUSE Observability for a team(s), but won’t manage the entire SUSE Observability installation.

  • Kubernetes Troubleshooter - has all permissions required to use SUSE Observability for troubleshooting, including the ability to enable/disable monitors, create custom views and use the Cli.

  • Guest - has read-only access to SUSE Observability.

The permissions assigned to each predefined SUSE Observability role can be found below. For details of the different permissions and how to manage them using the sts CLI, see Role based access control (RBAC) permissions

  • Administrator

  • Power User

  • Troubleshooter

  • Guest

The Administrator role (stackstate-admin): has all permissions assigned.

Permissions assigned to the predefined Administrator role (stackstate-admin) are listed below, these were retrieved using the sts CLI. For details of the different permissions and how to manage them using the sts CLI, see RBAC permissions.

$ ./sts rbac describe-permissions --subject stackstate-admin
PERMISSION                  | RESOURCE
access-view                 | everything
delete-view                 | everything
save-view                   | everything
access-cli                  | system
access-explore              | system
access-log-data             | system
access-synchronization-data | system
access-topic-data           | system
create-views                | system
execute-component-actions   | system
execute-component-templates | system
execute-node-sync           | system
execute-restricted-scripts  | system
export-settings             | system
import-settings             | system
manage-annotations          | system
manage-event-handlers       | system
manage-monitors             | system
manage-service-tokens       | system
manage-stackpacks           | system
manage-star-view            | system
manage-telemetry-streams    | system
manage-topology-elements    | system
perform-custom-query        | system
read-agents                 | system
read-metrics                | system
read-permissions            | system
read-settings               | system
read-stackpacks             | system
read-system-notifications   | system
read-telemetry-streams      | system
run-monitors                | system
update-permissions          | system
update-settings             | system
update-visualization        | system
upload-stackpacks           | system
view-monitors               | system

The Power User role (stackstate-power-user) has all Administrator permissions, except for:

  • execute-restricted-scripts

  • update-permissions

  • upload-stackpacks

Permissions assigned to the predefined Power User role (stackstate-power-user) are listed below, these were retrieved using the sts CLI. For details of the different permissions and how to manage them using the sts CLI, see RBAC permissions.

❯ ./sts rbac describe-permissions --subject stackstate-power-user
PERMISSION                  | RESOURCE
access-view                 | everything
delete-view                 | everything
save-view                   | everything
access-cli                  | system
access-explore              | system
access-log-data             | system
access-synchronization-data | system
access-topic-data           | system
create-views                | system
execute-component-actions   | system
execute-component-templates | system
execute-node-sync           | system
export-settings             | system
import-settings             | system
manage-annotations          | system
manage-event-handlers       | system
manage-monitors             | system
manage-stackpacks           | system
manage-star-view            | system
manage-telemetry-streams    | system
manage-topology-elements    | system
perform-custom-query        | system
read-agents                 | system
read-metrics                | system
read-permissions            | system
read-settings               | system
read-stackpacks             | system
read-system-notifications   | system
read-telemetry-streams      | system
run-monitors                | system
update-settings             | system
update-visualization        | system
view-monitors               | system

The Troubleshooter role (stackstate-k8s-troubleshooter) has access to all data available in SUSE Observability and the ability to create views and enable/disable monitors.

Permissions assigned to the predefined troubleshooter role are listed below, these were retrieved using the sts CLI. For details of the different permissions and how to manage them using the sts CLI, see RBAC permissions.

❯ ./sts rbac describe-permissions --subject stackstate-k8s-troubleshooter
PERMISSION                  | RESOURCE
access-view                 | everything
delete-view                 | everything
save-view                   | everything
access-cli                  | system
access-explore              | system
access-log-data             | system
access-synchronization-data | system
access-topic-data           | system
create-views                | system
execute-component-actions   | system
execute-component-templates | system
execute-node-sync           | system
export-settings             | system
import-settings             | system
manage-annotations          | system
manage-event-handlers       | system
manage-monitors             | system
manage-stackpacks           | system
manage-star-view            | system
manage-telemetry-streams    | system
manage-topology-elements    | system
perform-custom-query        | system
read-agents                 | system
read-metrics                | system
read-permissions            | system
read-settings               | system
read-stackpacks             | system
read-system-notifications   | system
read-telemetry-streams      | system
run-monitors                | system
update-settings             | system
update-visualization        | system
view-monitors               | system

The Guest role (stackstate-guest) has read-only access to SUSE Observability.

Permissions assigned to the predefined Guest role are listed below, these were retrieved using the sts CLI. For details of the different permissions and how to manage them using the sts CLI, see RBAC permissions.

❯ ./sts rbac describe-permissions --subject stackstate-guest
PERMISSION                | RESOURCE
access-view               | everything
access-cli                | system
access-explore            | system
execute-component-actions | system
manage-star-view          | system
perform-custom-query      | system
read-metrics              | system
read-permissions          | system
read-settings             | system
read-system-notifications | system
read-telemetry-streams    | system
update-visualization      | system
view-monitors             | system

Custom roles

In addition to the predefined roles (stackstate-admin, stackstate-power-user, stackstate-k8s-troubleshooter, stackstate-guest), which are always available, custom roles can be added. There are multiple ways to add custom roles:

  1. via the configuration file, with the same permission as the predefined roles

  2. via the configuration file, with a custom scope and custom system and view permissions

  3. using the sts CLI, the subjects and their permissions are stored in the database and can be modified during runtime

Roles added via the configuration file require a restart and therefore result in a short period of downtime. Roles created using the CLI are stored in the database and can be modified at runtime.

Custom names for predefined roles

Use this option when the predefined SUSE Observability roles are a good fit but the external authentication provider has different names for the roles. For example when the LDAP authentication provider has similar but differently named roles include this YAML snippet in an authentication.yaml to give the roles from LDAP the same permissions and scopes as the predefined, equivalent, roles.

stackstate:
  authentication:
    roles:
      guest: ["ldap-guest-role"]
      powerUser: ["ldap-power-user-role"]
      admin: ["ldap-admin-role"]
      k8sTroubleshooter: ["ldap-troubleshooter-role"]

To use it in for your SUSE Observability installation (or already running instance, note that it will restart the API):

helm upgrade \
  --install \
  --namespace suse-observability \
  --values values.yaml \
  --values authentication.yaml \
suse-observability \
suse-observability/suse-observability

Custom roles with custom scopes and permissions via the configuration file

To set up a new role called development-troubleshooter, which will allow the same permissions as the predefined troubleshooter role, but only for the dev-test cluster, include this YAML snippet in an authentication.yaml:

stackstate:
  authentication:
    roles:
      custom:
        development-troubleshooter:
          systemPermissions:
          - access-cli
          - create-views
          - execute-component-actions
          - export-settings
          - manage-monitors
          - manage-notifications
          - manage-stackpacks
          - manage-star-view
          - perform-custom-query
          - read-agents
          - read-metrics
          - read-permissions
          - read-settings
          - read-system-notifications
          - read-telemetry-streams
          - read-traces
          - run-monitors
          - update-visualization
          - view-metric-bindings
          - view-monitors
          - view-notifications
          viewPermissions:
          - access-view
          - save-view
          - delete-view
          topologyScope: "label = 'kube_cluster_name:dev-test'" # Optional, leave out when the scope should be all topology

To use it in for your SUSE Observability installation (or already running instance, note that it will restart the API):

helm upgrade \
  --install \
  --namespace suse-observability \
  --values values.yaml \
  --values authentication.yaml \
suse-observability \
suse-observability/suse-observability

Custom roles via the CLI

To set up a new role called development-troubleshooter, which will allow the same permissions as the normal troubleshooter role, but only for the dev-test cluster, a new subject needs to be created. Further more this subject needs to be assigned the required set of permissions:

  1. Create the subject (with the same name as the role, the role-subject matching is name based and case-sensitive):

    sts rbac create-subject --subject development-troubleshooter --scope 'label = "kube_cluster_name:dev-test"'

    Please note that when passing an topology query in a CLI command, all operators (like =, <,AND, and so on) need to be surrounded by spaces, as in the above example.

  2. Configured subjects need permissions to access parts of the UI and to execute actions in it. To grant the same permissions as the troubleshooter role, follow the below example:

     # To grant permission to access any view use the special view name 'everything'
 sts rbac grant --subject development-troubleshooter --permission access-view --resource "everything"
 sts rbac grant --subject development-troubleshooter --permission save-view --resource "everything"
 sts rbac grant --subject development-troubleshooter --permission delete-view --resource "everything"

 sts rbac grant --subject development-troubleshooter --permission access-cli
 sts rbac grant --subject development-troubleshooter --permission create-views
 sts rbac grant --subject development-troubleshooter --permission execute-component-actions
 sts rbac grant --subject development-troubleshooter --permission export-settings
 sts rbac grant --subject development-troubleshooter --permission manage-monitors
 sts rbac grant --subject development-troubleshooter --permission manage-notifications
 sts rbac grant --subject development-troubleshooter --permission manage-stackpacks
 sts rbac grant --subject development-troubleshooter --permission manage-star-view
 sts rbac grant --subject development-troubleshooter --permission perform-custom-query
 sts rbac grant --subject development-troubleshooter --permission read-agents
 sts rbac grant --subject development-troubleshooter --permission read-metrics
 sts rbac grant --subject development-troubleshooter --permission read-permissions
 sts rbac grant --subject development-troubleshooter --permission read-settings
 sts rbac grant --subject development-troubleshooter --permission read-system-notifications
 sts rbac grant --subject development-troubleshooter --permission read-telemetry-streams
 sts rbac grant --subject development-troubleshooter --permission read-traces
 sts rbac grant --subject development-troubleshooter --permission run-monitors
 sts rbac grant --subject development-troubleshooter --permission update-visualization
 sts rbac grant --subject development-troubleshooter --permission view-metric-bindings
 sts rbac grant --subject development-troubleshooter --permission view-monitors
 sts rbac grant --subject development-troubleshooter --permission view-notifications

Please note that the subject’s name, as well as permissions, are case-sensitive.