261 lines
No EOL
14 KiB
XML
261 lines
No EOL
14 KiB
XML
<chapter id="applicationClustering">
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<title>Application Clustering</title>
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<para>This chapter is focused on clustering support for your own AS7, EAP6 or Wildfly applications, which are secured by Keycloak.
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We support various deployment scenarios according if your application is:
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<itemizedlist>
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<listitem>
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<para>
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stateless or stateful
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</para>
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</listitem>
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<listitem>
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<para>
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distributable (replicated http session) or non-distributable and just relying on sticky sessions provided by loadbalancer
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</para>
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</listitem>
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<listitem>
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<para>
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deployed on same or different cluster hosts where keycloak servers are deployed
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</para>
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</listitem>
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</itemizedlist>
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</para>
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<para>
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The situation is a bit tricky as application communicates with Keycloak directly within user's browser (for example redirecting to login screen),
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but there is also backend (out-of-bound) communication between keycloak and application, which is hidden from end-user
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and his browser and hence can't rely on sticky sessions.
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</para>
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<section id="stateless-token-store">
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<title>Stateless token store</title>
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<para>
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By default, the servlet web application secured by Keycloak uses HTTP session to store information about authenticated
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user account. This means that this info could be replicated across cluster and your application will safely survive
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failover of some cluster node.
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</para>
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<para>
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However if you don't need or don't want to use HTTP Session, you may alternatively save all info about authenticated
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account into cookie. This is useful especially if your application is:
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<itemizedlist>
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<listitem>
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<para>
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stateless application without need of HTTP Session, but with requirement to be safe to failover of some cluster node
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</para>
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</listitem>
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<listitem>
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<para>
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stateful application, but you don't want sensitive token data to be saved in HTTP session
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</para>
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</listitem>
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<listitem>
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<para>
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stateless application relying on loadbalancer, which is not aware of sticky sessions (in this case cookie is your only way)
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</para>
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</listitem>
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</itemizedlist>
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</para>
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<para>
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To configure this, you can add this line to configuration of your adapter in <literal>WEB-INF/keycloak.json</literal> of your application:
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<programlisting>
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<![CDATA[
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"token-store": "cookie"
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]]>
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</programlisting>
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</para>
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<para>
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Default value of <literal>token-store</literal> is <literal>session</literal>, hence saving data in HTTP session.
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</para>
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<para>
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One limitation of cookie store is, that whole info about account is passed in cookie KEYCLOAK_ADAPTER_STATE in each HTTP request.
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Hence it's not the best for network performance.
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Another small limitation is limited support for Single-Sign out. It works without issues if you init servlet logout (HttpServletRequest.logout)
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from this application itself as the adapter will delete the KEYCLOAK_ADAPTER_STATE cookie. But back-channel logout initialized from different application can't be
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propagated by Keycloak to this application with cookie store. Hence it's recommended to use very short value of access token
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timeout (1 minute for example).
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</para>
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</section>
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<section id="relative-uri-optimization">
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<title>Relative URI optimization</title>
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<para>
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In many deployment scenarios will be Keycloak and secured applications deployed on same cluster hosts. For this case Keycloak
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already provides option to use relative URI as value of option <emphasis>auth-server-url</emphasis> in <literal>WEB-INF/keycloak.json</literal> .
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In this case, the URI of Keycloak server is resolved from the URI of current request.
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</para>
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<para>
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For example if your loadbalancer is on <emphasis>https://loadbalancer.com/myapp</emphasis> and auth-server-url is <emphasis>/auth</emphasis>,
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then relative URI of Keycloak is resolved to be <emphasis>https://loadbalancer.com/auth</emphasis> .
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</para>
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<para>
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For cluster setup, it may be even better to use option <emphasis>auth-server-url-for-backend-request</emphasis> . This allows to configure
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that backend requests between Keycloak and your application will be sent directly to same cluster host without additional
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round-trip through loadbalancer. So for this, it's good to configure values in <literal>WEB-INF/keycloak.json</literal> like this:
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<programlisting>
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<![CDATA[
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"auth-server-url": "/auth",
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"auth-server-url-for-backend-requests": "http://${jboss.host.name}:8080/auth"
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]]>
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</programlisting>
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</para>
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<para>
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This would mean that browser requests (like redirecting to Keycloak login screen) will be still resolved relatively
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to current request URI like <emphasis>https://loadbalancer.com/myapp</emphasis>, but backend (out-of-bound) requests between keycloak
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and your app are sent always to same cluster host with application .
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</para>
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<para>
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Note that additionally to network optimization,
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you may not need "https" in this case as application and keycloak are communicating directly within same cluster host.
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</para>
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</section>
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<section id="admin-url-configuration">
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<title>Admin URL configuration</title>
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<para>
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Admin URL for particular application can be configured in Keycloak admin console. It's used by Keycloak server to
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send backend requests to application for various tasks, like logout users or push revocation policies.
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</para>
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<para>
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For example logout of user from Keycloak works like this:
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<orderedlist>
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<listitem>
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<para>
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User sends logout request from one of applications where he is logged.
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</para>
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</listitem>
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<listitem>
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<para>
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Then application will send logout request to Keycloak
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</para>
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</listitem>
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<listitem>
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<para>
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Keycloak server logout user in itself, and then it re-sends logout request by backend channel to all
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applications where user is logged. Keycloak is using admin URL for this. So logout is propagated to all apps.
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</para>
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</listitem>
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</orderedlist>
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</para>
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<para>
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You may again use relative values for admin URL, but in cluster it may not be the best similarly like in <link linkend='relative-uri-optimization'>previous section</link> .
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</para>
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<para>
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Some examples of possible values of admin URL are:
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<variablelist>
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<varlistentry>
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<term>http://${jboss.host.name}:8080/myapp</term>
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<listitem>
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<para>
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This is best choice if "myapp" is deployed on same cluster hosts like Keycloak and is distributable.
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In this case Keycloak server sends logout request to itself, hence no communication with loadbalancer
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or other cluster nodes and no additional network traffic.
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</para>
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<para>
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Note that since the application is distributable,
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the backend request sent by Keycloak could be served on any application cluster node as invalidation
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of HTTP Session on <emphasis>node1</emphasis> will propagate the invalidation to other cluster nodes due to replicated HTTP sessions.
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</para>
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</listitem>
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</varlistentry>
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<varlistentry>
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<term>http://${application.session.host}:8080/myapp</term>
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<listitem>
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<para>
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Keycloak will track hosts where is particular HTTP Session served and it will send session
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invalidation message to proper cluster node.
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</para>
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<para>
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For example application is deployed on <emphasis>http://node1:8080/myapp</emphasis> and <emphasis>http://node2:8080/myapp</emphasis> .
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Now HTTP Session <emphasis>session1</emphasis> is sticky-session served on cluster node <emphasis>node2</emphasis> .
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When keycloak invalidates this session, it will send request directly to <emphasis>http://node2:8080/myapp</emphasis> .
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</para>
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<para>
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This is ideal configuration for distributable applications deployed on different host than keycloak
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or for non-distributable applications deployed either on same or different nodes than keycloak.
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Good thing is that it doesn't send requests through load-balancer and hence helps to reduce network traffic.
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</para>
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</listitem>
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</varlistentry>
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</variablelist>
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</para>
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</section>
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<section id="registration-app-nodes">
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<title>Registration of application nodes to Keycloak</title>
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<para>
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Previous section describes how can Keycloak send logout request to proper application node. However in some cases admin
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may want to propagate admin tasks to all registered cluster nodes, not just one of them. For example push new notBefore
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for realm or application, or logout all users from all applications on all cluster nodes.
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</para>
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<para>
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In this case Keycloak should
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be aware of all application cluster nodes, so it could send event to all of them. To achieve this, we support auto-discovery mechanism:
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<orderedlist>
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<listitem>
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<para>
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Once new application node joins cluster, it sends registration request to Keycloak server
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</para>
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</listitem>
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<listitem>
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<para>
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The request may be re-sent to Keycloak in configured periodic intervals
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</para>
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</listitem>
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<listitem>
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<para>
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If Keycloak won't receive re-registration request within specified timeout (should be greater than period from point 2)
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then it automatically unregister particular node
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</para>
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</listitem>
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<listitem>
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<para>
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Node is also unregistered in Keycloak when it sends unregistration request, which is usually during node
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shutdown or application undeployment. This may not work properly for forced shutdown when
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undeployment listeners are not invoked, so here you need to rely on automatic unregistration from point 3 .
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</para>
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</listitem>
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</orderedlist>
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</para>
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<para>
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Sending startup registrations and periodic re-registration is disabled by default, as it's main usecase is just
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cluster deployment. In <literal>WEB-INF/keycloak.json</literal> of your application, you can specify:
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<programlisting>
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<![CDATA[
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"register-node-at-startup": true,
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"register-node-period": 600,
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]]>
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</programlisting>
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which means that registration is sent at startup (accurately when 1st request is served by the application node)
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and then it's resent each 10 minutes.
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</para>
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<para>
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In Keycloak admin console you can specify the maximum node re-registration timeout (makes sense to have it
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bigger than <emphasis>register-node-period</emphasis> from adapter configuration for particular application). Also you
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can manually add and remove cluster nodes in admin console, which is useful if you don't want to rely on adapter's
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automatic registration or if you want to remove stale application nodes, which weren't unregistered
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(for example due to forced shutdown).
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</para>
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</section>
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<section id="refresh-token-each-req">
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<title>Refresh token in each request</title>
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<para>
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By default, application adapter tries to refresh access token when it's expired (period can be specified as <link linkend='token-timeouts'>Access Token Lifespan</link>) .
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However if you don't want to rely on the fact, that Keycloak is able to successfully propagate admin events like logout
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to your application nodes, then you have possibility to configure adapter to refresh access token in each HTTP request.
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</para>
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<para>
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In <literal>WEB-INF/keycloak.json</literal> you can configure:
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<programlisting>
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<![CDATA[
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"always-refresh-token": true
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]]>
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</programlisting>
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</para>
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<para>
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Note that this has big performance impact. It's useful just if performance is not priority, but security is critical
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and you can't rely on logout and push notBefore propagation from Keycloak to applications.
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</para>
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</section>
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</chapter> |