Cloudera Enterprise 5.15.x | Other versions

Cloudera Navigator Key Trustee Server High Availability

Key Trustee Server high availability applies to read operations only. If either Key Trustee Server fails, the KeyProvider automatically retries fetching keys from the functioning server. New write operations (for example, creating new encryption keys) are not allowed unless both Key Trustee Servers are operational.

If a Key Trustee Server fails, the following operations are impacted:

  • HDFS Encryption
    • You cannot create new encryption keys for encryption zones.
    • You can write to and read from existing encryption zones, but you cannot create new zones.
  • Cloudera Navigator Encrypt
    • You cannot register new Cloudera Navigator Encrypt clients.
    • You can continue reading and writing encrypted data, including creating new mount points, using existing clients.

Cloudera recommends monitoring both Key Trustee Servers. If a Key Trustee Server fails catastrophically, restore it from backup to a new host with the same hostname and IP address as the failed host. See Backing Up and Restoring Key Trustee Server and Clients for more information. Cloudera does not support PostgreSQL promotion to convert a passive Key Trustee Server to an active Key Trustee Server.

Depending on your cluster configuration and the security practices in your organization, you might need to restrict the allowed versions of TLS/SSL used by Key Trustee Server. For details, see Specifying TLS/SSL Minimum Allowed Version and Ciphers.

Continue reading:

Configuring Key Trustee Server High Availability Using Cloudera Manager

For new installations, use the Set up HDFS Data At Rest Encryption wizard and follow the instructions in Enabling HDFS Encryption Using the Wizard. When prompted, make sure that the Enable High Availability option is selected.

If you already have a Key Trustee Server service, and want to enable high availability, use the Add Role Instances wizard for the Key Trustee Server service instead to add the Passive Key Trustee Server and Passive Database roles.
  Important: You must assign the Key Trustee Server and Database roles to the same host. Assign the Active Key Trustee Server and Active Database roles to one host, and the Passive Key Trustee Server and Passive Database roles to a separate host.
After completing the Add Role Instances wizard, the Passive Key Trustee Server and Passive Database roles fail to start. Complete the following manual actions to start these roles:
  1. Stop the Key Trustee Server service (Key Trustee Server service > Actions > Stop).
  2. Run the Set Up Key Trustee Server Database command (Key Trustee Server service > Actions > Set Up Key Trustee Server Database).
  3. Run the following command on the Active Key Trustee Server: 
    $ sudo rsync -zcav --exclude .ssl /var/lib/keytrustee/.keytrustee root@keytrustee02.example.com:/var/lib/keytrustee/.

    Replace keytrustee02.example.com with the hostname of the Passive Key Trustee Server.

  4. Run the following command on the Passive Key Trustee Server: 
    $ sudo ktadmin init
  5. Start the Key Trustee Server service (Key Trustee Server service > Actions > Start).
      Important: Starting or restarting the Key Trustee Server service attempts to start the Active Database and Passive Database roles. If the Active Database is not running when the Passive Database attempts to start, the Passive Database fails to start. If this occurs, manually restart the Passive Database role after confirming that the Active Database role is running.
  6. Enable synchronous replication (Key Trustee Server service > Actions > Setup Enable Synchronous Replication in HA mode).
  7. Restart the Key Trustee Server service (Key Trustee Server service > Actions > Restart).

For parcel-based Key Trustee Server releases 5.8 and higher, Cloudera Manager automatically backs up Key Trustee Server (using the ktbackup.sh script) after adding the Key Trustee Server service. It also schedules automatic backups using cron. For package-based installations, you must manually back up Key Trustee Server and configure a cron job.

Cloudera Manager configures cron to run the backup script hourly. The latest 10 backups are retained in /var/lib/keytrustee in cleartext. For information about using the backup script and configuring the cron job (including how to encrypt backups), see Backing Up Key Trustee Server and Key Trustee KMS Using the ktbackup.sh Script.

Recovering a Key Trustee Server

If a Key Trustee Server fails, restore it from backup as soon as possible. If the Key Trustee Server hosts fails completely, make sure that you restore the Key Trustee Server to a new host with the same hostname and IP address as the failed host.

For more information, see Backing Up and Restoring Key Trustee Server and Clients.

Page generated May 18, 2018.