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Production Deployment Guide

LDAP Manager is production-ready with enterprise-grade security, high availability, and comprehensive monitoring capabilities.
ℹ️

Note: ✅ Production Ready: All security, reliability, and observability features have been implemented and tested.

Production Features Overview

🔒 Security

  • Encrypted Password Storage - Fernet symmetric encryption with 1-hour TTL
  • LDAP Injection Protection - All user input is escaped and validated
  • CORS Security - Environment-based origin whitelist
  • Non-Root Container - Runs as user ldapmanager:1000
  • Secure File Permissions - 0600 for cache and secrets

⚡ High Availability

  • Load Balancing - Intelligent node selection (READ: last→first, WRITE: first only)
  • Automatic Failover - 2-second connectivity checks with fallback chain
  • Connection Pooling - 5-minute TTL with automatic cleanup
  • Multi-Master Support - Full N-way replication cluster support

📊 Observability

  • Structured JSON Logging - Timestamp, level, module, function context
  • Audit Trail - All CREATE/UPDATE/DELETE operations logged
  • Request Metrics - Duration, status code, path tracking
  • Health Checks - Config validation, pool status, LDAP connectivity

🧪 Quality Assurance

  • 104 Backend Tests - 97% pass rate with comprehensive coverage
  • Security Testing - Encryption, injection, authentication tests
  • Integration Testing - API endpoints, LDAP operations
  • Configuration Validation - Pydantic schema validation at startup

Production Deployment

Step 1: Environment Configuration

Create a .env file with production settings:

# CORS Security - Whitelist your domain
ALLOWED_ORIGINS=https://ldap.company.com,https://ldap-backup.company.com

# Logging
LOG_LEVEL=INFO
JSON_LOGS=true

# Server
PORT=8000
WORKERS=4

Step 2: Docker Compose Production Setup

Use the production-hardened Docker Compose configuration:

version: '3.8'

services:
  ldap-manager:
    image: ghcr.io/vibhuvioio/ldap-manager:latest
    restart: unless-stopped

    env_file: .env

    volumes:
      - ./config.yml:/app/config.yml:ro
      - ldap-cache:/app/.cache
      - ldap-secrets:/app/.secrets

    ports:
      - "5173:5173"  # Frontend
      - "8000:8000"  # Backend API

    healthcheck:
      test: ["CMD", "curl", "-f", "http://localhost:8000/health"]
      interval: 30s
      timeout: 10s
      retries: 3
      start_period: 40s

    deploy:
      resources:
        limits:
          cpus: '2.0'
          memory: 1G
        reservations:
          cpus: '0.5'
          memory: 256M

    logging:
      driver: "json-file"
      options:
        max-size: "10m"
        max-file: "3"

    security_opt:
      - no-new-privileges:true

volumes:
  ldap-cache:
    driver: local
  ldap-secrets:
    driver: local

Step 3: Start the Application

docker-compose -f docker-compose.prod.yml up -d

Step 4: Verify Health

curl http://localhost:8000/health | jq

Expected response: 
{
  "status": "healthy",
  "timestamp": "2024-01-25T10:30:00Z",
  "version": "1.0.0",
  "checks": {
    "config": {"status": "ok", "clusters_count": 4},
    "connection_pool": {"status": "ok", "pool_size": 2},
    "ldap": {"status": "ok", "cluster": "production"}
  }
}

Load Balancing Strategy

Read Operations (Searches, Stats, Groups)

Uses reverse node order to distribute load:
  1. 1 Try last node (least loaded)
  2. 2 Fallback to second node
  3. 3 Fallback to first node
Example: 3-node cluster → 33% load per node instead of 100% on first node

Write Operations (Create, Update, Delete)

Always use first node (primary master) for consistency.

Automatic Failover

Each node is tested with a 2-second socket connectivity check. If unreachable, the next node in the chain is tried automatically.

Security Best Practices

Password Encryption

Passwords are encrypted at rest using Fernet symmetric encryption:
  • Algorithm: AES-128 in CBC mode with HMAC
  • Key Storage: /app/.secrets/encryption.key with 0600 permissions
  • TTL: 1 hour default (configurable)
  • Auto-Expiration: Expired passwords are deleted automatically

LDAP Injection Prevention

All user input in search queries is escaped using ldap.filter.escape_filter_chars():

# User input: *)(objectClass=*
# After escaping: \2a\29\28objectClass=\2a
# Result: Harmless literal search, not filter injection

CORS Configuration

Configure allowed origins in production:

ALLOWED_ORIGINS=https://ldap.company.com
Never use * in production with credentials enabled.

Monitoring & Logging

Structured Logs

All logs are output in JSON format for easy parsing:

{
  "timestamp": "2024-01-25T10:30:45.123Z",
  "level": "INFO",
  "logger": "app.api.entries",
  "message": "LDAP entry created",
  "module": "entries",
  "function": "create_entry",
  "line": 275,
  "cluster": "production",
  "dn": "cn=newuser,dc=example,dc=com",
  "operation": "CREATE"
}

Viewing Logs

# Follow logs in real-time
docker logs -f ldap-manager

# Last 100 lines
docker logs --tail 100 ldap-manager

# Search for errors
docker logs ldap-manager | grep '"level":"ERROR"'

Health Monitoring

# Check health endpoint
curl http://localhost:8000/health

# Monitor with watch
watch -n 5 'curl -s http://localhost:8000/health | jq .status'

Performance Optimizations

Connection Pooling

  • Before: ~500ms per request (new connection)
  • After: ~10ms per request (pooled connection)
  • TTL: 5 minutes
  • Cleanup: Automatic stale connection removal

Server-Side Pagination

  • Protocol: RFC 2696 Simple Paged Results
  • Performance: 10-100x improvement for large directories
  • Memory: Constant memory usage regardless of directory size

Request Timeouts

  • Network Timeout: 30 seconds
  • Operation Timeout: 30 seconds
  • Purpose: Prevents hung connections from blocking application

Backup & Recovery

Configuration Backup

# Backup config.yml
cp config.yml config.yml.backup.$(date +%Y%m%d)

# Backup persistent volumes
docker run --rm -v ldap-secrets:/data -v $(pwd):/backup alpine tar czf /backup/secrets-backup.tar.gz -C /data .

Password Cache Recovery

If password cache is lost, users will be prompted to re-enter passwords on next connection. Passwords are re-cached automatically.

Troubleshooting

Connection Failures

# Check LDAP server connectivity
docker exec ldap-manager curl -v telnet://192.168.0.101:389

# Check logs for connection errors
docker logs ldap-manager | grep "connection failed"

Password Cache Issues

# Check cache status
curl http://localhost:8000/api/password/check/your-cluster

# Clear specific cluster cache
curl -X DELETE http://localhost:8000/api/password/cache/your-cluster

Health Check Failures

# Detailed health status
curl http://localhost:8000/health | jq

# Check specific component
curl http://localhost:8000/health | jq '.checks.ldap'

Upgrade Guide

Zero-Downtime Upgrade

# Pull latest image
docker pull ghcr.io/vibhuvioio/ldap-manager:latest

# Restart with new image
docker-compose -f docker-compose.prod.yml up -d

# Verify health
curl http://localhost:8000/health

Rollback

# Use specific version
docker-compose -f docker-compose.prod.yml down
docker pull ghcr.io/vibhuvioio/ldap-manager:v1.0.0
docker-compose -f docker-compose.prod.yml up -d

Production Checklist

ℹ️

Note: Before Going Live:

  • ☑️ CORS configured with production domain(s)
  • ☑️ HTTPS/TLS enabled (reverse proxy required)
  • ☑️ Persistent volumes mounted for cache and secrets
  • ☑️ Resource limits configured (CPU, memory)
  • ☑️ Health check endpoint monitored
  • ☑️ Log aggregation configured (Elasticsearch, CloudWatch, etc.)
  • ☑️ Backup strategy for config.yml
  • ☑️ Alerting configured for health check failures
  • ☑️ All LDAP servers reachable from container
  • ☑️ Firewall rules allow LDAP ports (389/636)

Support & Resources

  • GitHub Issues - Bug reports and feature requests
  • PRODUCTION_READY.md - Detailed implementation documentation
  • Security Guide - Security features and best practices
  • Configuration Guide - Cluster setup and options

LDAP Manager is production-ready and actively maintained. Deploy with confidence! 🚀