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Kong Gateway Enterprise [ARCHIVE]
1.3-x

PermalinkStart Kong Enterprise Securely

PermalinkTable of Contents

PermalinkIntroduction

To secure the Admin API or Kong Manager, a Super Admin account is required.

The Super Admin has the ability to invite other Admins and restrict their access based on Permissions of Roles within Workspaces.

The first Super Admin account is created during database migrations following the guide below. It may only be added once.

PermalinkPrerequisites

After installing Kong Enterprise, either modify the configuration file or set environment variables for the following properties:

  • enforce_rbac will force all Admin API requests to require a Kong-Admin-Token. The Admin associated with the Kong-Admin-Token must have adequate Permissions in order for the request to succeed.

  • If using Kong Manager, select the type of authentication that Admins should use to log in. For the purpose of this guide, admin_gui_auth may be set to basic-auth. See Securing Kong Manager for other types of authentication.

For a simple configuration to use for the subsequent Getting Started guides:

enforce_rbac = on
admin_gui_auth = basic-auth
admin_gui_session_conf = {"secret":"secret","storage":"kong","cookie_secure":false}
admin_listen = 0.0.0.0:8001, 0.0.0.0:8444 ssl

⚠️Important: the Sessions Plugin requries a secret and is configured securely by default.

  • Under all circumstances, the secret must be manually set to a string.
  • If using HTTP instead of HTTPS, cookie_secure must be manually set to false.
  • If using different domains for the Admin API and Kong Manager, cookie_samesite must be set to off. Learn more about these properties in Session Security in Kong Manager, and see example configurations.

PermalinkStep 1

Set a password for the Super Admin. This environment variable must be present in the environment where database migrations will run.

$ export KONG_PASSWORD=<password-only-you-know>

This automatically creates a user, kong_admin, and a password that can be used to log in to Kong Manager. This password may also be used as a Kong-Admin-Token to make Admin API requests.

Note: only one Super Admin may be created using this method, and only on a fresh installation with an empty database. If one is not created during migrations, follow this guide to remediate.

Future migrations will not update the password or create additional Super Admins. To add additional Super Admins it is necessary to invite a new user as a Super Admin in Kong Manager.

PermalinkStep 2

Issue the following command to prepare your datastore by running the Kong migrations:

$ kong migrations bootstrap [-c /path/to/kong.conf]

PermalinkStep 3

Start Kong:

$ kong start [-c /path/to/kong.conf]

Note: the CLI accepts a configuration option (-c /path/to/kong.conf) allowing you to point to your own configuration.

PermalinkStep 4

To test that Kong Enterprise has successfully started with a Super Admin, visit Kong Manager’s URL. By default, it is on port :8002.

The username is kong_admin and the password is the one set in Step 1.

PermalinkDefault Ports

By default, Kong Enterprise listens on the following ports:

  • :8000: incoming HTTP traffic from Consumers, and forwarded to upstream Services.
  • :8443: incoming HTTPS traffic. This port behaves similarly to the :8000 port, except that it expects HTTPS traffic only.
  • :8003: Dev Portal listens for HTTP traffic, assuming Dev Portal is enabled.
  • :8446: Dev Portal listens for HTTPS traffic, assuming Dev Portal is enabled.
  • :8004: Dev Portal /files traffic over HTTP, assuming the Dev Portal is enabled.
  • :8447: Dev Portal /files traffic over HTTPS, assuming the Dev Portal is enabled.
  • :8001: Admin API listens for HTTP traffic.
  • :8444: Admin API listens for HTTPS traffic.
  • :8002: Kong Manager listens for HTTP traffic.
  • :8445: Kong Manager listens for HTTPS traffic.

PermalinkNext Steps

With Kong Enterprise started and the Super Admin logged in, it is now possible to create any entity in Kong.

Next, see how to segment the Kong cluster into Workspaces.