Creating and managing RGW users

Why this matters in production

The user record carries credentials, quotas, placement, and capabilities. Creating one is a single command; creating it with the attributes you will want later saves a series of follow-up modifications and, in the case of tenancy, an impossible migration.

Creating

radosgw-admin user create \
    --uid=analytics \
    --display-name="Analytics Team" \
    --email=analytics@example.com \
    --max-buckets=50

{
  "user_id": "analytics",
  "display_name": "Analytics Team",
  "keys": [{"user": "analytics", "access_key": "8FQ...", "secret_key": "kR2..."}],
  "max_buckets": 50,
  "bucket_quota": {"enabled": false},
  "user_quota": {"enabled": false}
}

The access and secret keys are generated and shown once in this output. Capture them at creation.

Tenanted users

radosgw-admin user create --tenant=acme --uid=alice --display-name="Alice"
radosgw-admin user info --tenant=acme --uid=alice

Decide on tenancy before the first user exists — a non-tenanted user cannot be moved into a tenant without recreating it and copying every object.

Inspecting and modifying

radosgw-admin user info --uid=analytics
radosgw-admin user list
radosgw-admin user stats --uid=analytics --sync-stats

radosgw-admin user modify --uid=analytics --max-buckets=100
radosgw-admin user modify --uid=analytics --display-name="Analytics Platform"

Suspend rather than remove

radosgw-admin user suspend --uid=analytics
radosgw-admin user enable --uid=analytics

Suspension blocks all access while preserving the user, their buckets, and their data. It is the right response to a compromised credential, a non-paying customer, or a user under investigation — and it is reversible.

Removal

radosgw-admin user rm --uid=analytics
radosgw-admin user rm --uid=analytics --purge-data

Without --purge-data, removal fails if the user owns buckets. With it, every bucket and object the user owns is deleted — irreversibly.

Bucket ownership

radosgw-admin bucket list --uid=analytics
radosgw-admin bucket link --bucket=data --uid=newowner
radosgw-admin bucket unlink --bucket=data --uid=analytics

Buckets belong to users, so transferring a bucket before removing a user is how you retire an account without losing its data.

Quiz

Production discipline

Make suspension rather than removal the default response to credential compromise, non-payment, or investigation — it is immediate, complete, and reversible. Decide on tenancy before the first user is created, since it is the one user attribute that cannot be changed afterwards.

Cross-course references

• Kubernetes: disabling a ServiceAccount rather than deleting it preserves the same reversibility
• Linux: locking an account rather than deleting it follows the identical practice