Access Control

• 1: Role Based Access and Security Tiers
• 2: Account Management
• 3: Integrating Okta into the Altinity.Cloud login page

1 - Role Based Access and Security Tiers

Access to ClickHouse data hosted in Altinity.Cloud is controlled through a combination of security tiers and account roles. This allows companies to tailor access to data in a way that maximizes security while still allowing ease of access.

Security Tiers

Altinity.Cloud groups sets of clusters together in ways that allows companies to provide Accounts access only to the clusters or groups of clusters that they need to.

Altinity.Cloud groups clusters into the following security related tiers:

• Nodes: The most basic level - an individual ClickHouse database and tables.
• Clusters: These contain one or more nodes provide ClickHouse database access.
• Environments: Environments contain one or more clusters.
• Organizations: Organizations contain one or more environments.

Account access is controlled by assigning an account a single role and a security tier depending on their role. A single account can be assigned to multiple organizations, environments, multiple clusters in an environment, or a single cluster depending on their account role.

Account Roles

The actions that can be taken by Altinity.Cloud accounts is based on the role they are assigned. The following roles and their actions based on the security tier is detailed in the table below:

The account roles are tied into the security tiers, and allow an account to access multiple environment and clusters depending on what type of tier they are assigned to.

For example, we may have the following situation:

• Accounts peter, paul, and mary and jessica are all members of the organization HappyDragon.
• HappyDragon has the following environments: HappyDragon_Dev and HappyDragon_Prod, each with the clusters marketing, sales, and ops.

The accounts are assigned the following roles and security tiers:

In this scenario, mary has the ability to access the environment HappyDragon_Prod, or can create new environments and manage them and any clusters within them. However, she is not able to edit or access HappyDragon_Dev or any of its clusters.

• Both peter and jessica have the ability to create and remove clusters within their assigned environments.
  • peter is able to modify the clusters in the environment HappyDragon_Dev.
  • jessica can modify clusters in both environments.
• paul can only access the cluster marketing in the environment HappyDragon_Prod.

2 - Account Management

Altinity.Cloud accounts with the role orgadmin are able to create new Altinity.Cloud accounts and associate them with organizations, environments, and one or more clusters depending on their role. For more information on roles, see Role Based Access and Security Tiers.

Account Page

The Account Page displays all accounts assigned to the same Organization and Environments as the logged in account.

For example: the accounts mario, luigi, and peach and todd are members of the organizations MushroomFactory and BeanFactory as follows:

• peach will be able to see their account and todd in the Account Page, while accounts mario and luigi will be hidden from them.
• mario will be able to see their account and luigi.

Access Accounts

To access the accounts that are assigned to the same Organizations and Environments as the logged in user with the account role orgadmin:

1. Login to Altinity.Cloud with an account granted the orgadmin role.
2. From the left navigation panel, select Accounts.
3. All accounts that are in the same Organizations and Environments as the logged in account will be displayed.

Account Details

Accounts have the following details that can be set by an account with the orgadmin role:

1. Common Information:
   1. Name: The name of the account.
   2. Email (Required): The email address of the account. This will be used to login, reset passwords, notifications, and other uses. This must be a working email for these functions to work.
   3. Password: The password for the account. Once a user has authenticated to the account, they can change their password.
   4. Confirm Password: Confirm the password for the account.
   5. Role (Required): The role assigned to the account. For more information on roles, see Role Based Access and Security Tiers.
   6. Organization: The organization assigned to the account. Note that the orgadmin can only assign accounts the same organizations that the orgadmin account also belongs to.
   7. Suspended: When enabled, this prevents the account from logging into Altinity.Cloud.
2. Environment Access:
   1. Select the environments that the account will require access to. Note that the orgadmin can only assign accounts the same environments that the orgadmin account also belongs to.
3. Cluster Access:
   1. This is only visible if the Role is set to envuser. This allows one or more clusters in the environments the new account was assigned to in Environmental Access to be accessed by them.
4. API Access:
   1. Allows the new account to make API calls from the listed domain names.

Account Actions

Create Account

orgadmin accounts can create new accounts and assign them to the same organization and environments they are assigned to. For example, continuing the scenario from above, if account peach is assigned to the organization MushroomFactory and the environments MushroomProd and MushroomDev, they can assign new accounts to the organization MushroomFactory, and to the environments MushroomProd or MushroomDev or both.

To create a new account:

1. Login to Altinity.Cloud with an account granted the orgadmin role.

2. From the left navigation panel, select Accounts.

3. Select Add Account.

4. Set the fields as listed in the Account Details section.

   

5. Once all settings are completed, select Save. The account will be able to login with the username and password, or if their email address is registered through Google, Auth0.

Edit Account

1. Login to Altinity.Cloud with an account granted the orgadmin role.
2. From the left navigation panel, select Accounts.
3. From the left hand side of the Accounts table, select the menu icon for the account to update and select Edit.
4. Update the fields as listed in the Account Details section.
5. When finished, select Save.

Suspend Account

Instead of deleting an account, setting an account to Suspended may be more efficient to preserve the accounts name and other settings. A suspended account is unable to login to Altinity.Cloud. This includes directly logging through a browser and API calls made under the account.

To suspend or activate an account:

1. Login to Altinity.Cloud with an account granted the orgadmin role.
2. From the left navigation panel, select Accounts.
3. From the left hand side of the Accounts table, select the menu icon for the account to update and select Edit.
   1. To suspend an account, toggle Suspended to on.
   2. To activate a suspended account, toggle Suspended to off.
4. When finished, select Save.

Delete Account

Accounts can be deleted which removes all information on the account. Clusters and environments created by account will remain.

To delete an existing account:

1. Login to Altinity.Cloud with an account granted the orgadmin role.
2. From the left navigation panel, select Accounts.
3. From the left hand side of the Accounts table, select the menu icon for the account to update and select Delete.
4. Verify the account is to be deleted by selecting OK.

3 - Integrating Okta into the Altinity.Cloud login page

10 March 2023 · Read time 3 min

Overview - Okta Integration

Altinity uses Auth0 so that customers who are already logged into other identity providers such as Google or Okta are automatically granted access to Altinity.Cloud.

The following diagram shows the Altinity login process using Auth0, plus adding Okta as discussed on this page.

1. Logging in to Altinity.Cloud using a Login Email and Password.
2. The Auth0 login link to use a 3rd party authenticator such as Google or Okta. (See Okta/Auth0 Altinity Integration)
3. Using Okta allows previously authorized logged-in employees to gain immediate access to Altinity.Cloud. (See Okta Customer Configuration)

Figure 1 – Altinity integration of an Okta customer to Auth0.

Setting up the Auth0 Connection

These steps are for Altinity customers to configure their login integration with Okta.

1. Go to Auth0 Dashboard 》Authentication 》Enterprise.
2. Click Create (➕ plus icon) located next to OpenID Connect.
3. Provide a name.
4. Copy the customer-provided Okta domain to Issuer URL.
5. Copy the customer-provided Client ID to Client ID.
6. Click Create.

If you closed the page, select Dashboard 》Applications 》<application name> to view those settings.

Contact Altinity Support

Contact Altinity to add the customer’s Okta domain and Client ID to the Altinity.Cloud access list.
Please provide the following:

• The domain you want to sign in on the Okta side
• The Issues URL
• Client ID

Okta/Auth0 Altinity Integration

These steps are for Altinity technical support to add an Okta connection to Auth0.

Setting up the Auth0 connection

1. Go to Auth0 Dashboard -> Authentication -> Enterprise.
2. Click Create (plus icon) next to OpenID Connect.
3. Provide a name.
4. Copy the Okta domain provided by a customer to Issuer URL.
5. Copy the Client ID provided by a customer to the Client ID.
6. Click Create.

Enabling the connection

1. Go to Auth0 Dashboard -> Applications.
2. Click the application you wish to use with the connection.
3. Go to the Connections tab, find your newly created connection, and switch it on.

Testing the connection

1. Go to Auth0 Dashboard -> Authentication -> Enterprise.
2. Click OpenID Connect (not the plus sign, the text).
3. Find the newly created connection.
4. Click the three dots on the right -> Try.
   • You should be greeted with an Okta password prompt, or if there is a problem, an error is shown.
     
     

Enabling the button

1. Go to Auth0 Dashboard -> Authentication -> Enterprise.
2. Click OpenID Connect (not the plus sign, the text).
3. Find the newly created connection and click its name.
4. Go to the Login Experience tab.
5. Check the Connection button -> Display connection as a button.
6. Configure the Button display name and logo URL.
7. Click Save.

Testing

1. Go to the https://acm.altinity.cloud login page.
2. Click Sign in with Auth0.
3. A button for the new connection should be shown.
4. Upon clicking the button, it should either ask for Okta credentials or log straight into the app.

Altinity blog post

The following Altinity blog post provides an in-depth discussion of adding Okta as an identity provider.

• How we set up Okta as an Altinity Cloud Identity Provider using Auth0