Configure RBAC for a Connect Cluster

In an RBAC-enabled environment, you must create a service principal for the Connect cluster. Within the service principal, you create role bindings so the Connect cluster can access the Kafka cluster and other resources.

Prerequisites:

• The user completing this procedure must have permission to create role bindings for the Connect service principal, on the Connect cluster, and on the Kafka cluster.
• An installed RBAC-enabled Confluent Platform environment with an installed and running Kafka cluster.
• The Confluent CLI installed.
• Authorization to create and modify principals for the organization.

The following steps guide you through configuring a service principal for Kafka Connect. How you create the service principal depends on your organization and operating environment (on-premises, private cloud, or public cloud) and is not covered in this procedure.

Note

For instructions on getting your actual cluster IDs, refer to Cluster Identifiers in Confluent Platform.

1. Enter the following Confluent CLI command to give an example service principal named $CONNECT_USER the role SecurityAdmin on the Connect cluster. The example cluster IDs $CONNECT_CLUSTER for Connect and $KAFKA_CLUSTER for Kafka are used in the command and all subsequent command examples.

   confluent iam rbac role-binding create \
   --principal User:$CONNECT_USER \
   --role SecurityAdmin \
   --kafka-cluster $KAFKA_CLUSTER \
   --connect-cluster-id $CONNECT_CLUSTER
   

2. Enter the following command to give $CONNECT_USER the role ResourceOwner on the group that Connect workers use to coordinate with other workers.

   confluent iam rbac role-binding create \
   --principal User:$CONNECT_USER \
   --role ResourceOwner \
   --resource Group:$CONNECT_CLUSTER \
   --kafka-cluster $KAFKA_CLUSTER
   

3. Enter the following commands to give $CONNECT_USER the role ResourceOwner on the internal Kafka topics used by Connect to store configuration, status, and offset information. Internal configuration topic $CONFIGS_TOPIC, internal offsets topic $OFFSETS_TOPIC, and status topic $STATUS_TOPIC are used in the examples.

   Note

   The configuration topics config.storage.topic, offset.storage.topic, and status.storage.topic are where the internal configuration, offset configuration, and status configuration data are stored. These are set for Confluent Platform to connect-configs, connect-offsets, and connect-status by default.

   confluent iam rbac role-binding create \
   --principal User:$CONNECT_USER \
   --role ResourceOwner \
   --resource Topic:$CONFIGS_TOPIC \
   --kafka-cluster $KAFKA_CLUSTER
   

   confluent iam rbac role-binding create \
   --principal User:$CONNECT_USER \
   --role ResourceOwner \
   --resource Topic:$OFFSETS_TOPIC \
   --kafka-cluster $KAFKA_CLUSTER
   

   confluent iam rbac role-binding create \
   --principal User:$CONNECT_USER \
   --role ResourceOwner \
   --resource Topic:$STATUS_TOPIC \
   --kafka-cluster $KAFKA_CLUSTER
   

   Important

   By default the Kafka worker uses the same settings and the same principal for reading and writing to the _confluent-command license topic that it uses to read and write to internal topics. For more information about Connect licensing, see Licensing Connectors.

If you have configured a Connect Secret Registry, you must complete two additional steps.

1. Enter the following command to give $CONNECT_USER the role ResourceOwner on the group that secret registry nodes use to coordinate with other nodes. Secret Registry group ID $SECRET_REGISTRY_GROUP is used in the example. Note that the actual value of $SECRET_REGISTRY_GROUP needs to match the value of config.providers.secret.param.secret.registry.group.id in the Connect worker properties. This value defaults to secret-registry if not specified in the Connect worker properties.

   confluent iam rbac role-binding create \
   --principal User:$CONNECT_USER \
   --role ResourceOwner \
   --resource Group:$SECRET_REGISTRY_GROUP \
   --kafka-cluster $KAFKA_CLUSTER
   

2. Enter the following command to give $CONNECT_USER the role ResourceOwner on the Kafka topic used to store secrets. Kafka secrets topic $SECRETS_TOPIC is used in the example. Note that the actual value of $SECRETS_TOPIC needs to match the value of config.providers.secret.param.kafkastore.topic in the Connect worker properties. This value defaults to _confluent-secrets if not specified in the Connect worker properties.

   Warning

   The default value for the secrets topic changed from _secrets to _confluent-secrets in version 5.4. If your Secret Registry cluster is not configured with a kafkastore.topic property, explicitly set it to _secrets before upgrading to 5.4, to avoid losing existing secrets.

   confluent iam rbac role-binding create \
   --principal User:$CONNECT_USER \
   --role ResourceOwner \
   --resource Topic:$SECRETS_TOPIC \
   --kafka-cluster $KAFKA_CLUSTER