Applies To:
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BIG-IQ Centralized Management
- 5.1.0
How do I manage access to BIG-IQ and my managed BIG-IP devices?
As a network or system manager, you need a way to differentiate between users, and to limit user access based on how they interact with F5® BIG-IQ® Centralized Management and your managed devices.
You can specify how you want users to be authenticated: locally on BIG-IQ, or remotely through your RADIUS or LDAP server. Additional security is provided through bidirectional trust and verification through key and certificate exchange (AuthN and AuthZ).
To help you manage all of this, it's important that you understand the following concepts:
- Users - are individuals for whom you are providing access to BIG-IQ resources, including access to managed BIG-IP® devices.
- User groups - are a way to organize individuals into groups so that you can grant or change the same privileges to several users at once.
- Roles - are associated with specific privileges, which you grant to users, allowing them to do a set of tasks on BIG-IQ, and on your managed devices.
Can I use my LDAP server to authenticate BIG-IQ users?
F5® BIG-IQ® Centralized Management can verify user credentials against your company's LDAP server (LDAP server versions 2 and 3, and OpenLDAP directory, Apache Directory Server, and Active Directory). After you set up BIG-IQ to use your LDAP server, you can add users and user groups that authenticated by your LDAP server.
Set up BIG-IQ to use a RADIUS server for user authentication
Before you can set up authentication, you must have specified your DNS settings. You usually do this when you license the F5 BIG-IQ Centralized Management system. You can set up F5 BIG-IQ Centralized Management to use your company's RADIUS server. You can add two additional backup RADIUS servers in case the primary server is not available for authentication.
Before integrating BIG-IQ with your LDAP server
Before integrating LDAP authentication with the BIG-IQ® system, you must first perform the following tasks:
- Use an LDAP browser to review the groups and users in your directory's structure and where they're located in the hierarchy of organizational units (OUs).
- Decide how you want to map user names.
- The first option is to map users directly to their Distinguished Name (DN) in the directory with a user bind template in the form of uid=<username>, ou=people,o=sevenSeas. For example, when you map John Smith's user name with his DN as uid=<jsmith>, ou=people,o=sevenSeas and he logs in as jsmith, he is correctly authenticated with his user name in the directory through his DN.
- The second option is to allow users to log in with names that do not map directly to their DN by specifying a userSearchFilter in the form of (&(uid=%s)) when creating the provider. For example, if John Smith's DN is cn=John Smith,ou=people,o=sevenSeas, but you would like him to be able to log in with jsmith, specify a userSearchFilter in the form of (&(jsmith=%s)). If your directory does not allow anonymous binds, you must also specify a bindUser and bindPassword so that the BIG-I system can validate the user's credentials.
- Decide which groups in your directory to map into BIG-IQ groups.
- If you configured a bindUser and bindPassword for users, the BIG-IQ system displays a list of groups from which to choose.
- If you haven't configured this for your users, you must know the DN for each group.
- Find out the DN where you can for all users and groups. This is the root bind DN for your directory, defined as as rootDN, when you create a provider. The BIG-IQ system uses the root bind DN as a starting point when it searches for users and groups.
- Find the host IP address for the LDAP server. The default port is 389, if not specified otherwise.
Set up BIG-IQ to use an LDAP server for user authentication
You can set up F5 BIG-IQ Centralized Management to user your company's LDAP server to authenticate users. You can specify multiple LDAP servers for user authentication.
Pre-defined RADIUS groups for authentication
Some RADIUS deployments include non-standard, vendor-specific attributes in the dictionary files. For these deployments, you must update the BIG-IQ system's default dictionary. Follow these steps if you want to use pre-defined RADIUS user groups on BIG-IQ.
- Copy the TinyRadius .jar file from the BIG-IQ system.
- Extract the contents of the TinyRadius .jar file.
- Update the file org/tinyradius/dictionary/default_dictionary file, by adding the vendor-specific attributes.
- Repack the contents into a new .jar file.
- Replace the old TinyRadius .jar on each BIG-IQ system with the new TinyRadius .jar file you created in step 4.
For example:
Add a locally-authenticated user
How do I limit privileges for users?
As a system manager, you need a way to limit user privileges based on their responsibilities. To help you do that, F5® BIG-IQ® Centralized Management ships with a set of default roles that you can assign to users. Roles are shared between BIG-IQ systems in a high availability pair, so they remain assigned to users even if the primary BIG-IQ system fails over.
Standard roles shipped with BIG-IQ
F5® BIG-IQ® Centralized Management ships with several standard roles, which you can assign to individual users, or to a user group. Roles are shared between BIG-IQ systems in a high availability pair, so they remain assigned to users even if the BIG-IQ system fails over.
Role | Role Description / Access |
---|---|
Administrator | This role has access to all licensing aspects of System Management and Device Management. This includes access for adding individual users, assigning roles, discovering BIG-IP® systems, installing updates, activating licenses, and setting up BIG-IQ® in a high availability (HA) configuration. |
ADC Deployer | This role has access to deploy and view ADC configuration objects for managed ADC devices. |
ADC Editor | This role has access to edit all ADC configuration objects. |
ADC Manager | This role has access to all aspects of ADC, including areas involved in creating, viewing, modifying, and deleting Local Traffic and Network objects. |
ADC Viewer | This role has view-only access for all ADC objects and features. |
Access Auditor | This role has access to all Access reports and dashboard. |
Access Deployer | This role has deploy access to Access configuration objects. This role cannot discover and edit devices or policies. |
Access Editor | This role has edit access to Access configuration objects. This role cannot discover and deploy devices or policies. This role includes the ability to add, update, and delete pools and pool members from the Access configuration object editor. |
Access Manager | This role has deploy and edit access to Access configuration objects, and has access to Access Reports and Dashboard. This role cannot add or remove devices and device groups, and cannot discover, import, or delete services. |
Access Viewer | This role has view-only access to Access configuration objects and tasks for Access devices that have been discovered. This role cannot edit, discover, or deploy devices or policies. |
Device Manager | This role has access to all aspects of Device Management, including areas involved in device discovery, group creation, licensing, software image management, UCS backups, templates, connectors, certificates, self IP addresses, VLANs, and interfaces. |
Device Viewer | This role has read-only access to all aspects of Device Management, including areas involved in device discovery, group creation, licensing, software image management, UCS backups, templates, connectors, certificates, self IP addresses, VLANs, and interfaces. |
Fraud Protection Manager | This role has access to all aspects of the Fraud Protection Service functionality for Web Client Security. |
Fraud Protection View | This role has view-only access to all Fraud Protection Service objects for Web Client Security . |
Network Security Deploy | This role has access to view and deploy Network Security objects. |
Network Security Manager | This role has access to all aspects of Network Security, including areas involved in creating, viewing, modifying, and deleting shared and firewall-specific security objects. |
Network Security Edit | This role has access to create, view, and modify objects for Network Security. |
Network Security View | This role has view-only access to firewall objects for Network Security. This role cannot edit, discover, or deploy devices or policies. |
Security Manager | This role has access to all aspects of Network Security, Web Application Security, and Web Client Security, including areas involved in device discovery, creating, viewing, modifying, and deleting Web Application Security, shared and firewall-specific security objects. |
Trust Discovery Import | This role manages device trust establishment, service discovery, service import, removal of services and removal of trust. |
Web App Security Deployer | This role can deploy and view ASM configuration objects for managed ASM devices. |
Web App Security Editor | This role manages config objects within the ASM module. |
Web App Security Manager | This role has access to all aspects of Web Application Security, including areas involved in creating, viewing, modifying, and deleting shared and web application-specific security objects. |
Web App Security Viewer | This role permits read-only access to the ASM module. |