In this case study we discuss how Alice and Bob would address configuration of OpenStack core services. These include the Keystone Identity service, Dashboard, and Compute services. Alice will be concerned with integration into the existing government directory services, while Bob will need to provide access to the public.

Alice's enterprise has a well-established directory service with two-factor authentication for all users. She configures Keystone to support an external authentication service supporting authentication with government-issued access cards. She also uses an external LDAP server to provide role information for the users that is integrated with the access control policy. Due to FedRAMP compliance requirements, Alice implements two-factor authentication on the Management network for all administrator access. Alice also deploys the Dashboard to manage many aspects of the cloud.  She deploys the Dashboard with HSTS to ensure that only HTTPS is used.  The Dashboard resides within an internal subdomain of the private network domain name system. Alice decides to use SPICE instead of VNC for the virtual console.  She wants to take advantage of the emerging capabilities in SPICE.

Bob must support authentication by the general public, so he elects to use provide for username / password authentication. He has concerns about brute force attacks attempting to crack user passwords, so he also uses an external authentication extension that throttles the number of failed login attempts. Bob's Management network is separate from the other networks within his cloud, but can be reached from his corporate network via ssh. As recommended earlier, Bob requires administrators to use two-factor authentication on the Management network to reduce the risk from compromised administrator passwords. Bob also deploys the Dashboard to manage many aspects of the cloud.  He deploys the Dashboard with HSTS to ensure that only HTTPS is used.  He has ensured that the Dashboard is deployed on a second-level domain due to the limitations of the same-origin policy. He also disables HORIZON_IMAGES_ALLOW_UPLOAD to prevent resource exhaustion. Bob decides to use VNC for his virtual console for its maturity and security features.