This is like a Möbius strip of code due to the fact that low-level components (serf/memberlist) are connected to high-level components (the catalog and mesh-gateways) in a twisty maze of references which make it hard to dive into. With that in mind here's a high level summary of what you'll find in the patch:
There are several distinct chunks of code that are affected:
* new flags and config options for the server
* retry join WAN is slightly different
* retry join code is shared to discover primary mesh gateways from secondary datacenters
* because retry join logic runs in the *agent* and the results of that
operation for primary mesh gateways are needed in the *server* there are
some methods like `RefreshPrimaryGatewayFallbackAddresses` that must occur
at multiple layers of abstraction just to pass the data down to the right
layer.
* new cache type `FederationStateListMeshGatewaysName` for use in `proxycfg/xds` layers
* the function signature for RPC dialing picked up a new required field (the
node name of the destination)
* several new RPCs for manipulating a FederationState object:
`FederationState:{Apply,Get,List,ListMeshGateways}`
* 3 read-only internal APIs for debugging use to invoke those RPCs from curl
* raft and fsm changes to persist these FederationStates
* replication for FederationStates as they are canonically stored in the
Primary and replicated to the Secondaries.
* a special derivative of anti-entropy that runs in secondaries to snapshot
their local mesh gateway `CheckServiceNodes` and sync them into their upstream
FederationState in the primary (this works in conjunction with the
replication to distribute addresses for all mesh gateways in all DCs to all
other DCs)
* a "gateway locator" convenience object to make use of this data to choose
the addresses of gateways to use for any given RPC or gossip operation to a
remote DC. This gets data from the "retry join" logic in the agent and also
directly calls into the FSM.
* RPC (`:8300`) on the server sniffs the first byte of a new connection to
determine if it's actually doing native TLS. If so it checks the ALPN header
for protocol determination (just like how the existing system uses the
type-byte marker).
* 2 new kinds of protocols are exclusively decoded via this native TLS
mechanism: one for ferrying "packet" operations (udp-like) from the gossip
layer and one for "stream" operations (tcp-like). The packet operations
re-use sockets (using length-prefixing) to cut down on TLS re-negotiation
overhead.
* the server instances specially wrap the `memberlist.NetTransport` when running
with gateway federation enabled (in a `wanfed.Transport`). The general gist is
that if it tries to dial a node in the SAME datacenter (deduced by looking
at the suffix of the node name) there is no change. If dialing a DIFFERENT
datacenter it is wrapped up in a TLS+ALPN blob and sent through some mesh
gateways to eventually end up in a server's :8300 port.
* a new flag when launching a mesh gateway via `consul connect envoy` to
indicate that the servers are to be exposed. This sets a special service
meta when registering the gateway into the catalog.
* `proxycfg/xds` notice this metadata blob to activate additional watches for
the FederationState objects as well as the location of all of the consul
servers in that datacenter.
* `xds:` if the extra metadata is in place additional clusters are defined in a
DC to bulk sink all traffic to another DC's gateways. For the current
datacenter we listen on a wildcard name (`server.<dc>.consul`) that load
balances all servers as well as one mini-cluster per node
(`<node>.server.<dc>.consul`)
* the `consul tls cert create` command got a new flag (`-node`) to help create
an additional SAN in certs that can be used with this flavor of federation.
This PR is almost a complete rewrite of the ACL system within Consul. It brings the features more in line with other HashiCorp products. Obviously there is quite a bit left to do here but most of it is related docs, testing and finishing the last few commands in the CLI. I will update the PR description and check off the todos as I finish them over the next few days/week.
Description
At a high level this PR is mainly to split ACL tokens from Policies and to split the concepts of Authorization from Identities. A lot of this PR is mostly just to support CRUD operations on ACLTokens and ACLPolicies. These in and of themselves are not particularly interesting. The bigger conceptual changes are in how tokens get resolved, how backwards compatibility is handled and the separation of policy from identity which could lead the way to allowing for alternative identity providers.
On the surface and with a new cluster the ACL system will look very similar to that of Nomads. Both have tokens and policies. Both have local tokens. The ACL management APIs for both are very similar. I even ripped off Nomad's ACL bootstrap resetting procedure. There are a few key differences though.
Nomad requires token and policy replication where Consul only requires policy replication with token replication being opt-in. In Consul local tokens only work with token replication being enabled though.
All policies in Nomad are globally applicable. In Consul all policies are stored and replicated globally but can be scoped to a subset of the datacenters. This allows for more granular access management.
Unlike Nomad, Consul has legacy baggage in the form of the original ACL system. The ramifications of this are:
A server running the new system must still support other clients using the legacy system.
A client running the new system must be able to use the legacy RPCs when the servers in its datacenter are running the legacy system.
The primary ACL DC's servers running in legacy mode needs to be a gate that keeps everything else in the entire multi-DC cluster running in legacy mode.
So not only does this PR implement the new ACL system but has a legacy mode built in for when the cluster isn't ready for new ACLs. Also detecting that new ACLs can be used is automatic and requires no configuration on the part of administrators. This process is detailed more in the "Transitioning from Legacy to New ACL Mode" section below.
R.B. Boyer