Re: [forge-dev] Multitenancy for Forge as a Service

Hi Max, Thanks for your questions, I provided my answers inline. Best Regards, *George Gastaldi* https://onename.com/gastaldi On Wed, Feb 1, 2017 at 10:31 AM, Max Rydahl Andersen <manderse(a)redhat.com <javascript:;>> wrote: > > > Hey Andrew, > > > > Yes, this is a really important question, and it's something that I > > believe > > that the Forge architecture supports out-of-the-box. Every interaction > > with > > the UI API (the Forge commands, per say) is stored in a request-scoped > > UIContext[1] object that is initialized when a command is invoked and > > destroyed when the command finishes executing. That means that you can > > execute multiple concurrent commands in a single Forge instance and > > they > > will not affect each other. > > Excellent. > > > When it comes to security, as a good practice, it is important to > > restrict > > the commands that the exposed REST service can execute. > > That's why in the Obsidian backend[2] we only expose a REST > > endpoint[3] > > consuming the Forge API to execute a limited number of commands (more > > specifically, the ones exposed by the obsidian-addon[4]) > > > > Last but not least, as the Forge Online app is just a PoC illustrating > > how > > Forge can work in a web environment, it does not impose restrictions > > to the > > supported commands, therefore it shouldn't be a web app to be used in > > production. > > Since we need something for production I would be curious to know what > you feel are missing ? > I was referring to the UI offered by Forge Online app ( https://github.com/forge/forge-service/tree/master/web). The core libraries is already being used in the Obsidian Toaster and Fabric8 (not the same binaries/packages, but the code is similar) > > > PS: It would be nice to ping the Fabric8 team for this matter as they > > are > > already using Forge as their project generator solution for a long > > time now. > > In case you missed it - fabric8 team is now part of devtools and > devtools are fabric8 :) > > We'll get James et.al. involved (they are in f2f meetings this week), > but as I understood > Fabric8 have a fork of the PoC adjusted to handle some more complex > workflows they were > exploring. Things they would like to get merged back as I understand it. > > Good, yes, that's right > That said - to outline the items we were discussing about forge as a > SaaS: > > Main reason we need it in first place is that Forge is *massive*, takes > up a lot of > resources - even more than Eclipse Che; thus we are very interested in > being able to run > Forge without having one instance per user. > > I need some numbers here regarding the "a lot of resources - even more than Eclipse Che". Is that because it creates a Weld instance per addon that depends on the furnace-cdi container? Most of the core addons depend on the furnace-simple container, which does not boot Weld. Also, Weld is no longer heavy, you know :)

> In that we had some questions and concerns in addition to the ones > above: > > A) can forge run without access to download updates etc. from maven and > similar ? > i.e. can we lock updates down and ensure it and its execution cannot > be altered > just because someone updated a plugin. > (We discussed firewalling it completely to be sure :) > > No updates are downloaded automatically in Forge. There are commands to install and update addons, but if you don't expose those commands that will never happen. Forge loads the addons on a specified directory. If nothing is deployed there (by any external process), it won't change anything In addition, you can specify a settings.xml with <offline> set to ensure that the Maven API won't try to look for any remote data.

B) Is there a way to ensure that secrets like GitHub auth keys and > others are > not exposed to users nor in logs ? > Yes, you can use the Configuration addon for that. There is an example encrypting data here: https://github.com/forge/core/blob/master/database-tools/ impl/src/main/java/org/jboss/forge/addon/database/tools/connections/ ConnectionProfileManagerImpl.java#L82 (maybe that's not a good example, but you get the idea) Basically with this addon you'll have this information read from a properties file (the contents may be encrypted or not - that's up to you). If that's not enough, we can create a Forge addon or improve any of the core ones that does what you need.

> C) Any expectations/ideas on how we would integrate obsidian generators > with > fabric8 ? > Two options we considered: > 1) call out to separate hosted obsidian-toaster and run the > risk of > exposing secrets on wire. > 2) run obsidian-toaster or a copy of it inside fabric8 online so > we don't expose any secrets. > The obsidian-toaster backend consists of a Forge addon + a JAX-RS resource. You could deploy this addon in the Fabric8 Forge service and invoke the UI that Fabric8 renders dynamically based on the command's metadata (it consumes the same JSON afaik)

Or you could do #2. > > Pete and others might have more, but above are the ones I wrote down > while being on bluejeans to the conversations. > > > I hope this helps. Looking forward to this list of requirements and > > happy > > to discuss about this anytime. > > > > [1] - > > https://github.com/forge/core/tree/master/ui#uicommand- > execution-lifecycle > > [2] - https://github.com/obsidian-toaster/generator-backend > > [3] - > > https://github.com/obsidian-toaster/generator-backend/ > blob/master/src/main/java/org/obsidiantoaster/generator/ > rest/ObsidianResource.java > > [4] - https://github.com/obsidian-toaster/obsidian-addon > > > > Best Regards, > > > > *George Gastaldi* > > > > https://onename.com/gastaldi > > > > On Tue, Jan 31, 2017 at 9:27 PM, Andrew Lee Rubinger <alr(a)redhat.com <javascript:;>> > > wrote: > > > >> Hi, all: > >> > >> We have some requests coming down the pike from the Developer Group > >> with > >> regards to running Forge as a Service (which is great!). > >> > >> Additionally, I'm suspecting this will soon be very important for us > >> as > >> well, as we continue to build out what's currently known as the > >> "Obsidian > >> Generator", using Forge as a backend. > >> > >> I'm hoping the Forge team will kindly advise as to our preparedness > >> for > >> running Forge in a multitenant environment. Concerns may include > >> resource > >> consumption (not running an instance-per-user), security, etc. Have > >> we yet > >> broached this subject specifically in the prototypes I've seen thus > >> far > >> using Forge Online? > >> > >> I've requested of the Developer Group a list of requirements they've > >> devised; will send those along here when I have them. In the > >> meantime, > >> mind describing where we currently stand? > >> > >> S, > >> ALR > >> > >> -- > >> Red Hat Developer Group Architecture > >> @ALRubinger > >> _______________________________________________ > >> forge-dev mailing list > >> forge-dev(a)lists.jboss.org <javascript:;> > >> https://lists.jboss.org/mailman/listinfo/forge-dev > >> > > _______________________________________________ > > forge-dev mailing list > > forge-dev(a)lists.jboss.org <javascript:;> > > https://lists.jboss.org/mailman/listinfo/forge-dev > > > /max > http://about.me/maxandersen > _______________________________________________ > forge-dev mailing list > forge-dev(a)lists.jboss.org <javascript:;> > https://lists.jboss.org/mailman/listinfo/forge-dev > _______________________________________________ forge-dev mailing list forge-dev(a)lists.jboss.org <javascript:;> https://lists.jboss.org/mailman/listinfo/forge-dev