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Boundary v0.13.0

The release notes below contain information about new functionality available in the Boundary v0.13.0 release. To see a granular record of when each item was merged into the Boundary project, please refer to the Changelog. To learn about what Boundary consists of, we highly recommend you review the Getting Started Page.

For instructions on how to upgrade an existing Boundary deployment to v0.13.0, refer to Boundary's general upgrade guide.

Boundary v0.13.0 highlights

The 0.13.0 release adds major new functionality to Boundary. Highlights include:

  • Boundary Enterprise version
  • SSH session recording
  • LDAP authentication method (beta)
  • HCP Boundary maintenance window
  • OIDC authentication improvements
  • Shared KMS workers
  • Static ports for targets
  • Dynamic host catalog external name

New features

Boundary Enterprise: Organizations are now able to deploy Boundary Enterprise within their self-managed infrastructure to let their teams securely access hosts and services consistently across any environment. The introduction of Boundary Enterprise allows organizations in highly regulated industries who are prohibited from adopting cloud based solutions to leverage Boundary's secure remote access functionalities. Boundary Enterprise has the same feature set as HCP Boundary and seamless migrations from OSS deployments are supported as well.

For more information, refer to Boundary Enterprise.

SSH session recording HCP/ENT: A fundamental challenge of securing access to sensitive computing resources is creating a system of record around users' access and actions over remote sessions. This release introduces session recording to help you address your compliance and threat management needs.

When you enable session recording for a target, any sessions in which a user requests access to that target are recorded. Recorded sessions are stored in an external data store so that you can access and manage them outside of Boundary for long-lasting data retention. You can view recorded sessions using a session player that runs in a browser.

For more information, refer to Auditing. To configure session recording for targets, refer to the session recording overview.

LDAP authentication method Beta: This release introduces a new Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) authentication method as a preview feature. LDAP is an open, vendor-neutral application protocol for accessing and maintaining directory information.

You can now configure Boundary to delegate authentication to an LDAP directory. The first time a user successfully authenticates using an LDAP auth method, a new LDAP account is created. LDAP-managed groups let you assign roles in Boundary based on the LDAP account's group memberships.

Create, read, update, and delete (CRUD) support for the new LDAP features is available through the CLI, API, and SDK, as well as HashiCorp Terraform. You can use LDAP to log in through any of the Boundary clients, including the CLI, Boundary Desktop, and the Boundary admin UI. Support for LDAP CRUD operations via the Boundary admin UI is planned for an upcoming release.

For more information, refer to the LDAP domain model documentation:

HCP Boundary maintenance window HCP only: HCP Boundary automatically updates your environment when a new version of Boundary is released. You can now schedule when that maintenance occurs to ensure that it does not interrupt peak work hours. When you schedule a maintenance window, HCP Boundary waits util the day and time window you selected to apply any patch or major version updates.

For more information, refer to Maintenance windows.

OIDC authentication improvements: The Boundary CLI now supports user authentication against an OIDC source in locked down environments where a browser may not be available to complete the auth flow. During authentication, the CLI will output the auth URL which can be used to complete the flow on another device and the resulting token is automatically passed to the CLI.

Shared KMS workers: KMS workers now have feature parity with PKI workers. You can use more than one KMS for registering downstreams across different networks.

For more information, refer to the worker configuration documentation.

Static ports for targets: Administrators can now configure a default, static port for clients when connecting to targets using the optional default_client_port attribute. Any workers that connect to a target will use the default port, if one is specified, unless overidden by the client attribute -listen-port.

Dynamic host catalog external name: You can now view the AWS or Azure host name when listing hosts in CLI, admin console, and desktop client.

Deprecations and changes

Boundary version 0.13.0 has the following deprecations and changes:

  • Due to the update to KMS workers, the previous KMS worker registration method is deprecated. You must opt in to use it. You should only use the deprecated behavior if compatibility with workers running a version less than 0.13.0 is required. To opt in, add use_deprecated_kms_auth_method = true to the worker configuration block.

    Note that when a worker using KMS and running version 0.13.0 or later connects to a controller using KMS and running version 0.13.0 or later, they transition to the new method automatically. To revert to the previous method after that, you must delete the worker and recreate it with the use_deprecated_kms_auth_method field specified.

  • Boundary now performs additional validity checking when you add grants to roles. The checks are designed to reject grants that are not properly configured. Previously, these would have been accepted without error, but the permissions would not be granted. An error message is provided now, with hints for resolution.

  • WithAutomaticVersioning for auth tokens from the Go SDK was incorrectly being generated for auth token resources, which do not support versioning. It has now been removed.

  • With the introduction of new plugin services, the Azure and AWS Host plugin repositories have been renamed to drop the word host:

  • PostgreSQL 12 or greater is now required. PostgreSQL 11 is no longer supported.

Known issues

Rotation of AWS access and secret keys during a session results in stale recordings: In Boundary version 0.13.0, when you rotate a storage bucket's secrets, any new sessions use the new credentials. However, previously established sessions continue to use the old credentials.

As a best practice, administrators should rotate credentials in a phased manner, ensuring that all previously established sessions are completed before revoking the stale credentials. Otherwise, you may end up with recordings that aren't stored in the remote storage bucket and are unable to be played back.

Unsupported recovery workflow during worker failure: If a worker fails during a recording, there is no way to recover the recording. This could happen due to a network connectivity issue or because a worker is scaled down, for example. There are a number of currently unsupported failure cases, including when the worker:

  • Crashes and restarts while servicing connections and channels for session to an SSH target
  • Crashes and restarts while closing a channel, before all files are synced to remote storage
  • Crashes and restarts while closing a connection recorder, before all files are synced to remote storage
  • Crashes and restarts while closing a session recorder, before all files are synced to remote storage
  • Crashes and never restarts or is seen again while closing a channel/connection recorer/session recorder
  • Loses its connection to the controller and cancels sessions, it must resend the information when communication resumes
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