LDAP User Authentication

Use my LDAP server to authenticate BIG-IQ users

F5 BIG-IQ Centralized Management supports encrypted connections to your company’s LDAP server (LDAP server versions 2 and 3, OpenLDAP directory, and Apache Directory Server) using one of these methods, with certificate validation:

• StartTLS - (with server certificate validation enabled) This is the recommended and most secure method.

• LDAPS - Typically used for connections to older servers, such as those running LDAPv2.

After you set up BIG-IQ to use your LDAP server, you can add users and user groups that authenticated by the LDAP server.

Before integrating BIG-IQ with your LDAP server for authentication

Before integrating LDAP server authentication with the F5 BIG-IQ Centralized Management system, you must gather the following information.

Set up BIG-IQ to use your LDAP server for user authentication

Before you can set up BIG-IQ to authenticate users against your LDAP server, you have to specify your LDAP server settings on F5 BIG-IQ Centralized Management and perform all the tasks outlined in the section titled, Before integrating BIG-IQ with your LDAP server.

You can configure BIG-IQ to use one or more of your company’s LDAP servers to authenticate users. Some fields are pre-populated with values that work well for most LDAP servers with standard configurations and schemas. Feel free to change these default values as need to match settings on your own LDAP server.

1. On the left, click USER MANAGEMENT > Auth Providers.

2. Click the Add button.

3. From the Provider Type list, select your LDAP server.

4. In the Name field, type a name for this new provider.

   This must be a unique name, and can be a maximum of 152 characters.

5. In the Servers setting Host field, type or paste the FQDN of your authentication server, and specify the port.

   By default, BIG-IQ uses port 636 for LDAPS and 389 for StartTLS. It’s best to leave these defaults.

   For the SSL server certificate validation to succeed, you must use a Fully Qualified Domain Name (FDQN), rather than an IP address. The FQDN must match the FQDN in the Common Name attribute of the subject of the X509 certificate presented by the LDAP server. For example, an LDAP server might present a certificate that includes the following subject data:

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   Subject: C=US, ST=Washington, L=Seattle, O=ldap1, OU=F5 Networks, CN=ldap.example.com/emailAddress=ldap@example.com 

   If your authentication server uses an alternate, non-standard port, you need to specify it in the authentication provider settings.

6. From the SSL list, select how you want BIG-IQ to communicate with your authentication server.

   • StartTLS - In almost all cases, you’ll want to select this option, because it is the most secure option. You’ll want to keep server certificate validation option enabled.
   • LDAPS - This is primarily used to connect to older servers, running an older version of the LDAP protocol (LDAPv2).
   • Disabled - This option to disables SSL and is not secure and not recommended.

7. In the SSL Certificate field, type or paste your LDAP server’s SSL certificate in PEM format.

   To establish the SSL connection to the LDAP server, the BIG-IQ must trust any one of the SSL certificates in the chain presented by the authentication server during the SSL handshake.

   As an alternative to the server certificate, you can use the issuing CA’s SSL certificate instead. A typical scenario where the issuing CA’s certificate is used is the case where an authentication provider uses multiple LDAP servers, each with a different certificate and all the certificates have the same issuing CA.

8. In the Bind User Distinguished Name and Bind User Password fields, type the full distinguished name and password for the dedicated bind account with directory search permissions.

9. In the User Bind Template field, type or paste the user in the Distinguished Name format uid={username},ou=people,o=sevenSeas .

10. In the User Search Filter field, type the filter expression you want to use to find users.

    For example: (&(uid={username}))

11. In the Root Distinguished Name field, type the distinguished names (DN) of the root context that contains both users and groups.

    The DN of the root context must be a full distinguished name. BIG-IQ uses it as the starting point in the directory when it searches for users and groups.

12. For the Authentication Method setting, specify a method.

    • Simple - Select this option to require a user name and password for authentication.
    • None - Select this option to ignore the user name and password. This option is not recommended. Warning: No password authentication is used if you select None.

13. For the Search Scope setting, select an option to specify the depth at which searches are made, relative to the Root Distinguished Name.

14. In the Connect Timeout field, type the number of seconds after which the BIG-IQ system stops trying to authenticate a user or user group.

15. In the Read Timeout field, type the number of seconds the BIG-IQ system will wait for a response to a query.

16. The default query for the Group Search Filter setting works well for most directories that use a standard LDAP configuration schema.

    This returns all the groups under the provided Root DN that matches the search term for the Remote Group Filter setting on the group search screen. However, feel free to delete two of the three clauses involving objectClass, leaving only the one corresponding to your directory schema.

    For example: (&(+[[-[[|(objectClass=posixGroup) (objectClass=groupOfUniqueNames)(objectClass=groupOfNames)) (]]-+[[]]+objectCategory=group)(+[[]]+]]+cn={searchterm}-[[*]]-+[[+[[*]]+]]+))

17. For the Group Membership User Attribute setting, the default value works well for most providers that use a standard schema.

    When authenticating a user, BIG-IQ uses this query to get all of the groups on the provider servers to which the user belongs. Feel free however to simplify it and leave only the one of the three clauses that matches your directory schema. In you change the query, you can use the token {userDN} anywhere the user’s distinguished name should be substituted in the query and the token {username} anywhere the user’s login name should be substituted.

18. If you want to authenticate users with certificates rather than a user name and password, select the Enable Client Certificate Authentication check box.

    Note: Be sure to test your authentication provider settings before you enable this feature, to make sure BIB-IQ can successfully authenticate against the remote directly. Otherwise, you could get locked out of BIG-IQ.

    • Choose the CA certificate file.
    • Specify the Certificate Username Attribute so BIG-IQ can extract the user information from the file. In most cases the default CN works.
    • For the Certificate Username Filter, specify the exact user name. This can be a sub-string, but it has to match what you type here.
    • For the Certificate Revocation List, you can optionally select one or more files.If you want BIG-IQ to authenticate locally in the event certificate authentication fails,
    • select the Enable Local Authentication Fallback check box.

19. If you don’t want the authentication provider to display on the BIG-IQ login screen, for the Hide Provider setting, select the Hide provider on login screen check box.

20. To verify these provider settings, type a user and password, and click the Test button.

Add a BIG-IQ user authenticated by my LDAP server and associate it with a role

If you want to add a user authenticated against your LDAP server, you first have to configure your LDAP server settings on BIG-IQ.

Once you understand exactly who you want to perform certain tasks, you can provide them access to particular areas of BIG-IQ by adding them as a user and assigning the appropriate built-in or custom role. You can assign as many roles as required to cover the user’s responsibilities.

For the LDAP-authenticated user to access BIG-IQ, you must put the local user in a BIG-IQ role, or put in a role in a local group mapped to one of the user’s groups on the LDAP server.

1. On the left, click USER MANAGEMENT > Users.

2. Click the Add button.

3. From the Auth Provider list, select your LDAP server.

4. In the User Name field, type the name for this user.

5. In the Full Name field, type a name to identify the individual with this type of user access.

   The full name can contain a combination of letters, symbols, numbers and spaces.

6. For the Roles setting, from the Available list, select each user role you want to associate with this user, and move it to the Selected list.

   Important: Be sure to let your users know that their access to certain parts of the BIG-IQ user interface depends on which role they are assigned.

Important: If this BIG-IQ is part of an HA pair, you must log in to the secondary BIG-IQ system, click System -> BIG-IQ HA, click the BIG-IQ HA Settings button, then click the Log Out & Refresh button. This procedure is required because BIG-IQ handles users and user groups differently than other data synchronized between BIG-IQ systems in an HA pair. If you don’t perform this procedure, this new user cannot successfully log in to the secondary system.

Create an LDAP authenticated user group

Important: For the LDAP-authenticated user to access BIG-IQ, you must put the local user in a BIG-IQ role, or put in a role a local group that is mapped to one of the user’s groups on the LDAP server.

Create a user group to offer individual users the same privileges on F5 BIG-IQ Centralized Management. This user group will be authorized by your LDAP server.

1. At the left, click USER MANAGEMENT > User Groups.

   The User Groups screen opens.

2. Click the Add button.

3. From the Auth Provider list, select your LDAP server.

4. There are two ways to specify the remote group to map to:

   • If you specified a bind user and a group search filter for authentication, then type a term to filter into the Remote Group Filter field (for example, *Engineers*). Alternatively, you can leave it blank, or use the wildcard * to return all groups. Then click the Search button to view the list.

     The default Group Search Filter query, (&(objectCategory=group)(cn={searchterm}*)), works well for most Active Directory controllers that use a standard schema. This query returns all the groups under the provided Root DN that match the search term entered as the Remote Group Filter expression on the group search page. You can modify this query as needed to match your directory schema.

   • If you have not configured these options, in the Group Distinguished field, type the exact name of the group.

5. From the Available Roles list, select the user roles that have the privileges you want to grant to this user group and move them to the Selected list.

Important: If this BIG-IQ is part of an HA pair, you must log in to the secondary BIG-IQ system, click System -> BIG-IQ HA, click the BIG-IQ HA Settings button, then click the Log Out & Refresh button. This procedure is required because BIG-IQ handles users and user groups differently than other data synchronized between BIG-IQ systems in an HA pair. If you don’t perform this procedure, this new user cannot successfully log in to the secondary system.