AI Deployment Credentials Storage with Vault LDAP

Question

Pulumi · Accepted Answer

To securely store AI deployment credentials, we use HashiCorp Vault, a tool for securely accessing secrets. A common approach involves integrating Vault with an LDAP (Lightweight Directory Access Protocol) service for user authentication. This means that users and applications can authenticate against LDAP to access secrets stored in Vault.

Below is a Python Pulumi program that sets up Vault with an LDAP authentication backend. This program does the following:

1. Deploys an LDAP authentication backend to Vault, using the `vault.ldap.AuthBackend` resource. This backend allows users to authenticate with Vault using their LDAP credentials.
2. Configures the LDAP server details including the URL, user and group DNs (Distinguished Names), and other necessary configuration items.
3. Optionally, the program could also define certain users and groups within the LDAP directory to have specific policies attached within Vault, which would be done through the `vault.ldap.AuthBackendUser` and `vault.ldap.AuthBackendGroup` resources respectively.

Please install the required Pulumi Vault provider with:
```bash
pip install pulumi_vault
```

Here's the Pulumi program in Python:

```python
import pulumi
import pulumi_vault as vault

# Instantiate a LDAP Authentication Backend
ldap_auth = vault.ldap.AuthBackend("ldapAuth",
    path="ldap",  # The path to mount the LDAP backend; this can be customized
    description="LDAP Auth",  # A description of what this backend is for
    url="ldap://ldap.example.com",  # The URL of the LDAP server
    userdn="ou=Users,dc=example,dc=com",  # The LDAP search base for user entries
    groupdn="ou=Groups,dc=example,dc=com",  # The LDAP search base for group entries
    upndomain="example.com",  # The userPrincipalDomain used to construct the UPN string for the authenticating user
    binddn="cn=vault,ou=Users,dc=example,dc=com",  # The Distinguished Name (DN) to bind to the LDAP server with
    bindpass="bind-password",  # Password for the bind DN
    userattr="uid",  # Attribute on user attribute schema to use for values
    groupattr="cn",  # Attribute on group attribute schema to map to policies
    starttls=False,  # Use TLS for connection with LDAP
    insecure_tls=True,  # Skip certificate verification when a plain STARTTLS connection is used
    certificate="-----BEGIN CERTIFICATE-----
...
-----END CERTIFICATE-----",  # The CA certificate to verify the LDAP server certificate
)

# Export the path where the LDAP auth is mounted
pulumi.export('ldap_auth_path', ldap_auth.path)
```

To make use of this program, replace the placeholders with the actual values from your LDAP server and desired configuration. Note that for security reasons, you should not hardcode sensitive information (like `bindpass`) in your source code. Instead, use Pulumi's configuration system or another secrets management approach.

Also, ensure that your Vault server is properly installed and configured before running this Pulumi program. If you need to set up Vault on your infrastructure, you can look into other Pulumi resources like `vault.Cluster` to provision a Vault cluster.

Additionally, to assign specific policies to users or groups, you could expand the program to include `vault.ldap.AuthBackendUser` and `vault.ldap.AuthBackendGroup` resources using their corresponding documentation links as references.

Remember that you will need appropriate permissions to interact with both the Vault server and the LDAP server. Make sure to handle this securely and follow your organization's operational standards for secrets management.