SAML authentication for OpenSearch Dashboards

SAML authentication for OpenSearch Dashboards lets you use your existing identity provider to offer single sign-on (SSO) for Dashboards on Amazon OpenSearch Service domains running OpenSearch or Elasticsearch 6.7 or later. To use SAML authentication, you must enable fine-grained access control.

Rather than authenticating through Amazon Cognito or the internal user database, SAML authentication for OpenSearch Dashboards lets you use third-party identity providers to log in to Dashboards, manage fine-grained access control, search your data, and build visualizations. OpenSearch Service supports providers that use the SAML 2.0 standard, such as Okta, Keycloak, Microsoft Entra ID, Active Directory Federation Services (ADFS), Auth0, and AWS IAM Identity Center.

SAML authentication for Dashboards is only for accessing OpenSearch Dashboards through a web browser. Your SAML credentials do not let you make direct HTTP requests to the OpenSearch or Dashboards APIs.

SAML configuration overview

This documentation assumes that you have an existing identity provider and some familiarity with it. We can't provide detailed configuration steps for your exact provider, only for your OpenSearch Service domain.

The OpenSearch Dashboards login flow can take one of two forms:

OpenSearch Service provides two single sign-on URLs, SP-initiated and IdP-initiated, but you only need the one that matches your desired OpenSearch Dashboards login flow.

Regardless of which authentication type you use, the goal is to log in through your identity provider and receive a SAML assertion that contains your username (required) and any backend roles (optional, but recommended). This information allows fine-grained access control to assign permissions to SAML users. In external identity providers, backend roles are typically called "roles" or "groups."

Considerations

Consider the following when you configure SAML authentication:

SAML authentication for VPC domains

SAML doesn't require direct communication between your identity provider and your service provider. Therefore, even if your OpenSearch domain is hosted within a private VPC, you can still use SAML as long as your browser can communicate with both your OpenSearch cluster and your identity provider. Your browser essentially acts as the intermediary between your identity provider and your service provider. For a useful diagram that explains the SAML authentication flow, see the Okta documentation.

Modifying the domain access policy

Before you configure SAML authentication, you must update the domain access policy to allow SAML users to access the domain. Otherwise, you'll see access denied errors.

We recommend the following domain access policy, which provides full access to the subresources (/*) on the domain:

JSON

{
  "Version":"2012-10-17",
  "Statement": [
    {
      "Effect": "Allow",
      "Principal": {
        "AWS": "*"
      },
      "Action": "es:ESHttp*",
      "Resource": "arn:aws:es:us-east-1:111122223333:domain/domain-name/*"
    }
  ]
}

To make the policy more restrictive, you can add an IP address condition to the policy. This conditions limits access to only the specified IP address range or subnet. For example, the following policy allows access only from the 192.0.2.0/24 subnet:

JSON

{
  "Version":"2012-10-17",
  "Statement": [
    {
      "Effect": "Allow",
      "Principal": {
        "AWS": "*"
      },
      "Action": [
        "es:ESHttp*"
      ],
      "Condition": {
        "IpAddress": {
          "aws:SourceIp": [
            "192.0.2.0/24"
          ]
        }
      },
      "Resource": "arn:aws:es:us-east-1:111122223333:domain/domain-name/*"
    }
  ]
}

Configuring SP- or IdP-initiated authentication

These steps explain how to enable SAML authentication with SP-initiated or IdP-initiated authentication for OpenSearch Dashboards. For the extra step required to enable both, see Configuring both SP- and IdP-initiated authentication.

Step 1: Enable SAML authentication

You can enable SAML authentication either during domain creation, or by choosing Actions, Edit security configuration on an existing domain. The following steps vary slightly depending on which one you choose.

Within the domain configuration, under SAML authentication for OpenSearch Dashboards/Kibana, select Enable SAML authentication.

Step 2: Configure your identity provider

Perform the following steps depending on when you're configuring SAML authentication.

If you're creating a new domain

If you're in the process of creating a new domain, OpenSearch Service can't yet generate a service provider entity ID or SSO URLs. Your identity provider requires these values in order to properly enable SAML authentication, but they can only be generated after the domain is created. To work around this interdependency during domain creation, you can provide temporary values into your IdP configuration to generate the required metadata and then update them once your domain is active.

If you're using a custom endpoint, you can infer what the URLs will be. For example, if your custom endpoint is www.custom-endpoint.com, the service provider entity ID will be www.custom-endpoint.com, the IdP-initiated SSO URL will be www.custom-endpoint.com/_dashboards/_opendistro/_security/saml/acs/idpinitiated, and the SP-initiated SSO URL will be www.custom-endpoint.com/_dashboards/_opendistro/_security/saml/acs. You can use the values to configure your identity provider before the domain is created. See the next section for examples.

If you're not using a custom endpoint, you can enter temporary values into your IdP to generate the required metadata, and then update them later after the domain is active.

For example, within Okta, you can enter https://temp-endpoint.amazonaws.com into the Single sign on URL and Audience URI (SP Entity ID) fields, which enables you to generate the metadata. Then, after the domain is active, you can retrieve the correct values from OpenSearch Service and update them in Okta. For instructions, see Step 6: Update your IdP URLs.

If you're editing an existing domain