Cassandra Database Secrets Engine

Cassandra is one of the supported plugins for the database secrets engine. This plugin generates database credentials dynamically based on configured roles for the Cassandra database.

See the database secrets engine docs for more information about setting up the database secrets engine.

Capabilities

Setup

1. Vault will need a Cassandra user with the following permissions:

   GRANT CREATE ON ALL ROLES to '<YOUR USER>';
   GRANT ALTER ON ALL ROLES to '<YOUR USER>';
   GRANT DROP ON ALL ROLES to '<YOUR USER>';
   GRANT AUTHORIZE ON ALL ROLES to '<YOUR USER>';
   

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2. Enable the database secrets engine if it is not already enabled:

   $ vault secrets enable database
   Success! Enabled the database secrets engine at: database/
   

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   By default, the secrets engine will enable at the name of the engine. To enable the secrets engine at a different path, use the -path argument.

3. Configure Vault with the proper plugin and connection information:

   $ vault write database/config/my-cassandra-database \
       plugin_name="cassandra-database-plugin" \
       hosts=127.0.0.1 \
       protocol_version=4 \
       username=vaultuser \
       password=vaultpass \
       allowed_roles=my-role
   

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4. Configure a role that maps a name in Vault to an SQL statement to execute to create the database credential:

   $ vault write database/roles/my-role \
       db_name=my-cassandra-database \
       creation_statements="CREATE USER '{{username}}' WITH PASSWORD '{{password}}' NOSUPERUSER; \
             GRANT SELECT ON ALL KEYSPACES TO {{username}};" \
       default_ttl="1h" \
       max_ttl="24h"
   Success! Data written to: database/roles/my-role
   

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Usage

After the secrets engine is configured and a user/machine has a Vault token with the proper permission, it can generate credentials.

1. Generate a new credential by reading from the /creds endpoint with the name of the role:

   $ vault read database/creds/my-role
   Key                Value
   ---                -----
   lease_id           database/creds/my-role/2f6a614c-4aa2-7b19-24b9-ad944a8d4de6
   lease_duration     1h
   lease_renewable    true
   password           7iO-FxlVCdj8szsgGgsL
   username           v_vaultuser_my_role_6zjahr4mjn5c9prgucy1_1602541475
   

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API

The full list of configurable options can be seen in the Cassandra database plugin API page.

For more information on the database secrets engine's HTTP API please see the Database secret secrets engine API page.