Skip to main content

PSMDB - A MongoDB alternative for having Encryption At Rest


Encryption is the most popular tool for securing data both in transit and at rest.

- For protecting data in transit, we can configure to use the TLS connection

- For protecting data at rest, we can use Percona Server for MongoDB (PSMDB), an open-source alternative for MongoDB Enterprise.


License

PSMDB Docker images follow the SSPL license. Therefore, it is not a problem when I only have my containers deployed in on-premises environments.

Running MongoDB Replication on OpenShift

I have successfully installed the replication by following the guide Install Percona Server for MongoDB on OpenShift. In order to make it work properly with my needs, I disabled some features from the default deployment. See the detail in this change

Basically, I needed to create a CRD (Custom Resource Definition) to let OpenShift/Kubernetes what PSMDB is. Then, I deployed the Operator pod. Finally, I deployed the PSMDB StatefulSet. I used NFS shares for Persistent Volumes.

Create CRD for PSMDB

2git clone https://github.com/percona/percona-server-mongodb-operator 3cd percona-server-mongodb-operator 4 5# create Custom Resource Definition (CRD) with cluster-admin role 6# This task is needed to executed once 7oc apply -f deploy/crd.yaml

Deploy the Operator pod

2oc new-project psmdb 3 4# Add role-based access control (RBAC) 5oc apply -f deploy/rbac.yaml 6 7# deploy operator pod 8oc apply -f deploy/operator.yaml 9 10# Add secret 11oc create -f deploy/secrets.yaml

Create SealedSecret for local keyfile

(Assumed that SealedSecret is installed and ready for use)

By default, the operator generates a normal Kubernetes secret with the name "my-cluster-name-mongodb-encryption-key". This secret is automatically attached to the MongoDB StatefulSet and persisted as a file through volumes. The operator also handles passing the files to "mongod" command in the container entry point. We can replace the secret in the deployment templates "deploy/cr.yaml". For example:

1 security 2 enableEncryption: true 3 encryptionKeySecret: mongodb-encryption-key 4 encryptionCipherMode: AES256-CBC

Here is an example to create a SealedSecret "mongodb-encryption-key" locally and apply it to the project.
1 $ openssl rand -base64 32 > mongodb-keyfile 2$ cat mongodb-keyfile | kubectl create secret generic mongodb-encryption-key \ 3--dry-run=client --from-file=encryption-key=/dev/stdin \ 4-o yaml > mongodb-encryption-secret.yaml 5$ kubeseal < mongodb-encryption-secret.yaml > mongodb-encryption-sealed-secret.yaml 6$ oc create -f mongodb-encryption-sealed-secret.yaml

Install PSMDB StatefulSet

(Assumed that NFS is installed and ready for use)

Create NFS shares: data-0, data-1, and data-2. Here is a sample command for data-0
1$> ssh someuser@files.example.com.local 2$> sudo mkdir /srv/data/psmdb/mongodb/data-0 3$> sudo chown nfsnobody:0 /srv/data/psmdb/mongodb/data-0 4$> sudo chmod go+w /srv/data/psmdb/mongodb/data-0 5$> sudo chmod g+s /srv/data/psmdb/mongodb/data-0

The directory attributes should look like

drwxrwsrwx. 5 nfsnobody root 4096 Jun 24 03:31 data-0

drwxrwsrwx. 5 nfsnobody root 4096 Jun 24 03:30 data-1

drwxrwsrwx. 5 nfsnobody root 4096 Jun 24 03:31 data-2

Create corresponding Persistent Volumes with NFS shares
1kind: PersistentVolume 2apiVersion: v1 3metadata: 4 name: psmdb-mongodb-data-0 5spec: 6 capacity: 7 storage: 2Gi 8 nfs: 9 server: files.example.com.local 10 path: /srv/data/psmdb/mongodb/data-0 11 accessModes: 12 - ReadWriteOnce 13 persistentVolumeReclaimPolicy: Recycle 14 storageClassName: psmdb 15

Install the PSMDB StatefulSet
1 $> oc apply -f deploy/cr.yaml

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

JSF 2 - Dynamically manipulating the component tree with system events

Let's suppose we want to modify the metadata (attributes)  of elements such as render , requried , maxlength but we do not define in JSF tags. The manipulating components can be conducted in Drools  files, for example. How could we do? I think that is what we need to change something of component tree during JSF life-cycle. JSF supports event handling throughout the JSF life-cycle. In this post, I use two events: postAddToView for scanning components tree and preRenderView for manipulating the meta of components before rendering to GUI. I modified my own project from previous post for this example. This is my first further JSF trying out with the project as I said before. :) We define the tags f:event below the form - a container component of the components which we want to work on. The valid values for the attribute type for f:event can be found from tag library document  of JSF 2. <!DOCTYPE html> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" x...

Make simple music program with beep(freq, duration) with Pascal

Pascal is my first programing language when I have studied in high school. It was really exciting for me. :) The Pascal programming language was created by Niklaus Wirth in 1970. It was named after Blaise Pascal, a famous French Mathematician. It was made as a language to teach programming and to be reliable and efficient. Pascal has since become more than just an academic language and is now used commercially . I tried to make a simple music program by using Lazarus IDE on MS Window 7, 64-bit. It frustrated me a few times how difficulty to use Sound command to make a sound. Sound did not work on my compiler and my platform anymore. So far, I just could use beep(freq, duration) from window unit to implement my work. Here is my code. ;) program mysong; uses Windows, crt; const C: Integer = 512; { x = A * EXP(LN(2)/12)} C_: Integer = 542; D: Integer = 574; D_: Integer = 608; E: Integer = 644; F: Integer = 682; F_: Integer = 723; G: Integer = ...

AngularJS - Build a custom validation directive for using multiple emails in textarea

AngularJS already supports the built-in validation with text input with type email. Something simple likes the following: <input name="input" ng-model="email.text" required="" type="email" /> <span class="error" ng-show="myForm.input.$error.email"> Not valid email!</span> However, I used a text area and I wanted to enter some email addresses that's saparated by a comma (,). I had a short research and it looked like AngualarJS has not supported this functionality so far. Therefore, I needed to build a custom directive that I could add my own validation functions. My validation was done only on client side, so I used the $validators object. Note that, there is the $asyncValidators object which handles asynchronous validation, such as making an $http request to the backend. This is just my implementation on my project. In order to understand that, I supposed you already had experiences with ...

Books Read in 2022

My bookshelf Technical - Operating System: Three Easy Pieces. Andrea Arpaci-Dusseau, Remzi Arpaci-Dusseau. - The Effective Engineer. Edmond Lau. - English Grammar in Use. Raymond Murphy - Mythical Man-Month, The: Essays on Software Engineering. Brooks Jr., Frederick P.  - Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams (3rd edition). Tom DeMarco, Timothy Lister. - A Philosophy of Software Design. John Ousterhout. - Modern Computer Architecture and Organization: Learn x86, ARM, and RISC-V architectures and the design of smartphones, PCs, and cloud servers. Jim Ledin. Thought Provoking - Đúng Việc. Giản Tư Trung. - A Brief History of Time. Stephen Hawking. - Một đời như kẻ tìm đường. Phan Văn Trường. - Một đời thương thuyết. Phan Văn Trường. - Tinh hoa xử thế - Dám bị ghét. Kishimi Ichiro, Koga Fumitake. - Phép màu để vượt lên chính mình. Nhan Húc Quân. - Scouting for Boys: A Handbook for Instruction in Good Citizenship Through Woodcraft. Robert Baden-Powell. - Thay Đổi Cuộc Sống Với Nhân ...

A Template for Software Engineering Standards

Software engineering standard template A well-structured standard acts as a blueprint that guides engineers in their daily tasks and long-term goals. Below, I will outline a template for creating a comprehensive software engineering standard. Header The header serves as the document's identifier. It contains the following: Authors : The people who have contributed to the creation of the standard. Created Date : The date when the document was initially created. Version : The version of the standard. It is typically updated with significant changes. Status : The current status of the document, whether it's in draft, in-review, or official. Next Review Date : The date when the standard will be reviewed for relevancy and accuracy. Table of Contents A table of contents provides an overview of what the document contains, making it easier for readers to navigate through the document. Body The body of the standard comprises: Values : The core beliefs that guide the decision-maki...