Adding a customer managed encryption key to a CDP environment running on Azure

By default, local Data Lake, FreeIPA, and Data Hub disks attached to Azure VMs and the PostgreSQL server instance used by the Data Lake and Data Hubs are encrypted with server-side encryption (SSE) using Platform Managed Keys (PMK), but you can optionally configure SSE with Customer Managed Keys (CMK).

The CMK can be specified during environment registration and, if present, is used for encrypting Data Lake, FreeIPA, and Data Hub disks and PostgreSQL server instances. Alternatively, it is possible to specify it once the environment is running, in which case the CMK will only be used for Data Hubs created after the CMK was added.

The disks that are attached to the VMs of the Data Lake, FreeIPA, and Data Hub clusters will be associated with a Disk Encryption Set (DES) that is created with the key URL as the underlying encryption key version. The DES dedicated to the CDP environment will be created in the resource group of the environment before the FreeIPA launch at the beginning of the environment creation process.

This documentation covers the following topics:
  • Azure prerequisites for using a CMK
  • Registering a new Azure environment and specifying a CMK
  • Creating a Data Hub with the same CMK
  • Checking whether a CMK exists for an Azure environment
  • Adding a CMK to an existing Azure environment

Register an Azure environment with a CMK

You can specify an existing customer managed key (CMK) during Azure environment registration and the encryption key will be used to encrypt the VMs and databases running in the environment.

Steps

You can register your environment as described in Register an Azure environment from CDP UI, just make sure that on the Region, Networking and Security page you enable the following:
  1. Under Customer-Managed Keys, click Enable Customer-Managed Keys.
  2. In the same section, under Select Resource group select the resource group where the CMK is located.
  3. Provide the URL of the key value where the CMK resides. This is the same as the key identifier that you can copy directly from Azure Portal

Use the following CDP CLI command to create an environment with the encryption key created earlier. Replace the placeholders with actual values. For example <ENVIRONMENT-NAME> should be replaced with an actual name.

The parameters important for this feature are highlighted:
cdp environments create-azure-environment \
--environment-name <ENVIRONMENT_NAME> \
--credential-name <CREDENTIAL_NAME> \
--region <REGION> \
--security-access cidr=<YOUR-ORGANIZATION’S_CIDR> \
--public-key '<SSH_PUBLIC_KEY>' \
--log-storage <STORAGE_LOCATION> \
--description '<DESCRIPTION>' \
--resource-group-name <ENV_RESOUCE_GROUP_NAME> \
--encryption-key-resouce-group-name <CMK_RESOUCE_GROUP_NAME> \
--encryption-key-url <KEY_RESOUCE_ID>

cdp environments set-id-broker-mappings \
--environment-name <ENVIRONMENT_NAME> \
--data-access-role <DATA_ACCESS_IDENTITY>\
--ranger-audit-role <RANGER_AUDIT_IDENTITY> \
--set-empty-mappings 

cdp datalake create-azure-datalake \
--datalake-name <DATALAKE_NAME> \
--environment-name <ENVIRONMENT_NAME> \
--cloud-provider-configuration <STORAGE_LOCATION_BASE_CONFIGURATION>

The encryption key can be present in a separate resource group than in which the environment is being created. The resource group in which encryption key is present can be provided using --encryption-key-resouce-group-name. Either --encryption-key-resouce-group-name or --resource-group-name must be present. Depending on the resource group where you environment and encryption key reside, there are three possible use cases:

  • If your encryption key is in the same resource group as you wish to create the environment in, you can provide a common resource group with --resource-group-name parameter. In this case, you do not need to provide the --encryption-key-resouce-group-name parameter.

  • If your encryption key is in a different resource group than you wish to create the environment in and you wish to use some other existing resource group for the environment, you can provide encryption key’s resource group with --encryption-key-resouce-group-name and the environment’s resource group with --resource-group-name.

If you don’t want to specify an existing resource group for the environment, you just need to provide the encryption key’s resource group using --encryption-key-resouce-group-name and the environment’s resource groups will be created by CDP.

You can obtain more complete commands using the instructions in Obtain CLI commands for registering an environment.

Create a Data Hub on Azure with a CMK

Use CDP web interface or CDP CLI to create a Data Hub cluster. Note that this doesn’t require any extra steps, so you can refer to the Data Hub documentation.

The disks that are attached to the VMs of the Data Hub cluster will be associated with a Disk Encryption Set (DES) that is created with the key URL as the underlying encryption key version. The DES dedicated to the CDP environment will be created in the resource group of the environment at the beginning of the environment creation process (before the FreeIPA launch, specifically).

Check Azure environment’s CMK

You can check in an Azure environment’s summary whether a CMK is used to encrypt a given environment.

Steps

  1. In the Management Console, navigate to Environments and click on the environment for which you would like to set a CMK.
  2. Click on the Summary tab.
  3. Scroll down to the Customer Managed Encryption Key section.
    If a CMK exists, the entry will look similar to:
  4. You can also find the CMK information by clicking on the Data Lake tab and then navigating to the Hardware tab.
  5. Click on >> on the right side of the screen next to any of the nodes to expand the node related information.
  6. Under Storage Details, the following information is included about the CMK:
    • Whether the node has been encrypted with a CMK
    • CMK encryption key URL
    • Disk Encryption Set ID
    For example:

You can use the cdp environments update-azure-encryption-resources command to check environment’s CMK encryption status.

If encryption key is set, the cdp environments update-azure-encryption-resources command will return the disk encryption set, encryption key, and encryption key's resource group details.

Check Data Hub's CMK

You can check in a Data Hub’s hardware tab whether a CMK is used to encrypt it.

Steps

  1. Navigate to the Data Hub details > Hardware tab.

  2. Click on >> on the right side of the screen next to any of the nodes to expand the node related information.

  3. Under Storage Details, Under Storage Details, the following information is included about the CMK:
    • Whether the node has been encrypted with a CMK
    • CMK encryption key URL
    • Disk Encryption Set ID

Set a CMK for an existing Azure environment

You can set a CMK for an existing environment. The CMK will be only used for encrypting disks of Data Hubs created after the CMK was added.

Steps

You can add the encryption key to an existing environment that does not have an encryption key set by navigating to the Summary page of the environment.
  1. In the Management Console, navigate to Environments and click on the environment for which you would like to set a CMK.

  2. Click on the Summary tab.

  3. Scroll down to the Customer Managed Encryption Key section.

  4. If no CMK has been set, you will see a message stating that there is no customer-managed key enabled.

  5. Click on the edit button in the top right corner of the tab.

  6. Click on the toggle button next to Enable Customer-Managed Keys to enable adding a CMK.
  7. Provide the following:
    1. Provide the encryption key URL. This is the same as the key identifier that you can copy directly from Azure Portal.

    2. If your encryption key resource group is different from the environment’s resource group, provide the name of the resource group.

    3. Click Save.

You can add an encryption key for an existing environment that does not yet have encryption enabled.

If your encryption key resource group is same as environment resource group, use:
cdp environments update-azure-encryption-resources \
  --environment-name <ENVIRONMENT_NAME> \
  --encryption-key-url <CMK_URL> \
If your encryption key resource group is different from environment resource group, use:
cdp environments update-azure-encryption-resources \
  --environment-name <ENVIRONMENT_NAME> \
  --encryption-key-url <CMK_URL> \
  --encryption-key-resource-group-name <CMK_RESOURCE_GROUP>