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Disable X-Pack Plugin

You data is precious. Definitely, you will not want to leave your production database unprotected. Hence, KubeDB automates Elasticsearch X-Pack configuration. It provides you authentication, authorization and TLS security. However, you can disable X-Pack security. You have to set spec.disableSecurity field of Elasticsearch object to true.

This tutorial will show you how to disable X-Pack security for Elasticsearch database in KubeDB.

Before You Begin

At first, you need to have a Kubernetes cluster, and the kubectl command-line tool must be configured to communicate with your cluster. If you do not already have a cluster, you can create one by using kind.

Now, install KubeDB cli on your workstation and KubeDB operator in your cluster following the steps here.

To keep things isolated, this tutorial uses a separate namespace called demo throughout this tutorial.

$ kubectl create ns demo
namespace/demo created

$ kubectl get ns demo
NAME    STATUS  AGE
demo    Active  5s

Note: YAML files used in this tutorial are stored in docs/examples/elasticsearch folder in GitHub repository kubedb/docs.

X-Pack enabled ElasticsearchVersion

To deploy with X-Pack, you need to use an ElasticsearchVersion where X-Pack is used as authPlugin.

Here, we are going to use ElasticsearchVersion 7.3.2.

To change authPlugin, it is recommended to create another ElasticsearchVersion CRD. Then, use that ElasticsearchVersion to install an Elasticsearch without authentication, or with other authPlugin.

$ kubectl get elasticsearchversions 7.3.2 -o yaml
apiVersion: catalog.kubedb.com/v1alpha1
kind: ElasticsearchVersion
metadata:
  name: searchguard-7.9.3
spec:
  authPlugin: SearchGuard
  db:
    image: kubedb/elasticsearch:7.9.3-searchguard
  distribution: SearchGuard
  exporter:
    image: kubedb/elasticsearch_exporter:1.1.0
  initContainer:
    image: kubedb/toybox:0.8.4
    yqImage: kubedb/elasticsearch-init:7.9.3-searchguard
  podSecurityPolicies:
    databasePolicyName: elasticsearch-db
  stash:
    addon:
      backupTask:
        name: elasticsearch-backup-7.3.2
        params:
        - name: args
          value: --match=^(?![.])(?!searchguard).+
      restoreTask:
        name: elasticsearch-restore-7.3.2
  version: 7.9.3

Create Elasticsearch

In order to disable X-Pack, you have to set spec.disableSecurity field of Elasticsearch object to true.

Below is the YAML of Elasticsearch object that will be created in this tutorial.

apiVersion: kubedb.com/v1alpha2
kind: Elasticsearch
metadata:
  name: es-xpack-disabled
  namespace: demo
spec:
  version: searchguard-7.9.3
  disableSecurity: true
  storage:
    storageClassName: "standard"
    accessModes:
    - ReadWriteOnce
    resources:
      requests:
        storage: 1Gi

Let’s create the Elasticsearch object,

$ kubectl create -f https://github.com/kubedb/docs/raw/v2021.09.09/docs/examples/elasticsearch/x-pack/es-xpack-disabled.yaml
elasticsearch.kubedb.com/es-xpack-disabled created

Wait for Elasticsearch to be ready,

$ kubectl get es -n demo es-xpack-disabled
NAME                VERSION   STATUS    AGE
es-xpack-disabled   7.3.2     Running   6m14s

Connect to Elasticsearch Database

As we have disabled X-Pack security, we no longer require username and password to connect with our Elasticsearch database.

At first, forward port 9200 of es-xpack-disabled-0 pod. Run following command in a separate terminal,

$ kubectl port-forward -n demo es-xpack-disabled-0 9200
Forwarding from 127.0.0.1:9200 -> 9200
Forwarding from [::1]:9200 -> 9200

Now, we can connect with the database at localhost:9200.

Let’s check health of our Elasticsearch database.

$ curl "localhost:9200/_cluster/health?pretty"
{
  "cluster_name" : "es-xpack-disabled",
  "status" : "green",
  "timed_out" : false,
  "number_of_nodes" : 1,
  "number_of_data_nodes" : 1,
  "active_primary_shards" : 0,
  "active_shards" : 0,
  "relocating_shards" : 0,
  "initializing_shards" : 0,
  "unassigned_shards" : 0,
  "delayed_unassigned_shards" : 0,
  "number_of_pending_tasks" : 0,
  "number_of_in_flight_fetch" : 0,
  "task_max_waiting_in_queue_millis" : 0,
  "active_shards_percent_as_number" : 100.0
}

Additionally, to query the settings about xpack,

$ curl "localhost:9200/_nodes/_all/settings?pretty"
{
  "_nodes" : {
    "total" : 1,
    "successful" : 1,
    "failed" : 0
  },
  "cluster_name" : "es-xpack-disabled",
  "nodes" : {
    "GpHq4kaERoq8_43zXup_mA" : {
      "name" : "es-xpack-disabled-0",
      "transport_address" : "10.244.1.7:9300",
      "host" : "10.244.1.7",
      "ip" : "10.244.1.7",
      "version" : "7.3.2",
      "build_flavor" : "default",
      "build_type" : "docker",
      "build_hash" : "1c1faf1",
      "roles" : [
        "ingest",
        "master",
        "data"
      ],
      "attributes" : {
        "ml.machine_memory" : "16683249664",
        "xpack.installed" : "true",
        "ml.max_open_jobs" : "20"
      },
      "settings" : {
        "cluster" : {
          "initial_master_nodes" : "es-xpack-disabled-0",
          "name" : "es-xpack-disabled",
          "election" : {
            "strategy" : "supports_voting_only"
          }
        },
        "node" : {
          "name" : "es-xpack-disabled-0",
          "attr" : {
            "xpack" : {
              "installed" : "true"
            },
            "ml" : {
              "machine_memory" : "16683249664",
              "max_open_jobs" : "20"
            }
          },
          "data" : "true",
          "ingest" : "true",
          "master" : "true"
        },
        "path" : {
          "logs" : "/usr/share/elasticsearch/logs",
          "home" : "/usr/share/elasticsearch"
        },
        "discovery" : {
          "seed_hosts" : "es-xpack-disabled-master"
        },
        "client" : {
          "type" : "node"
        },
        "http" : {
          "type" : "security4",
          "type.default" : "netty4"
        },
        "transport" : {
          "type" : "security4",
          "features" : {
            "x-pack" : "true"
          },
          "type.default" : "netty4"
        },
        "network" : {
          "host" : "0.0.0.0"
        }
      }
    }
  }
}

Here, xpack.security.enabled is set to false. As a result, xpack security configurations are missing from the node settings.

Cleaning up

To cleanup the Kubernetes resources created by this tutorial, run:

kubectl patch -n demo es/es-xpack-disabled -p '{"spec":{"terminationPolicy":"WipeOut"}}' --type="merge"
kubectl delete -n demo es/es-xpack-disabled

kubectl delete ns demo

Next Steps