Usernames and Passwords

Users of Couchbase Server typically require a username and password. A user may be either an administrator or an application. An application may be a program or server, or may be a simple, single command-line query. (Note that an application may be permitted to use a client certificate for purposes of authentication, instead of a username-password combination: see Certificates, for information.)

The Full Administrator who installs and configures Couchbase Server (and so has full read-write access to the whole system), defines their own username and password during the configuration-process: see Create a Cluster, for details. Subsequently, this administrator can add additional administrators to the system; assigning a username and password to each. Whenever any needs to log into Couchbase Web Console in order to inspect data, statistics, and settings (and possibly make changes), they must specify their own unique username-password combination, at the authentication-prompt provided by the server.

An application, if it is not using a client certificate for purposes of authentication, must pass its username and password as parameters. Therefore, Couchbase CLI commands, N1QL queries, and executables supported by the Couchbase SDK all provide syntax to allow the passing of a username and password.

Additionally, a special master password may be designed and used by the Full Administrator, in order to manage system secrets. See Manage System Secrets, for details.

Note that a cluster running Couchbase Server Enterprise Edition can have any number of users. A cluster running Community Edition can have a maximum of twenty users.

Couchbase Server provides a default password-policy. This demands only that the password have a minimum of six characters.

For pre-production purposes, it may be desirable to strengthen this default password-policy. For production purposes, it should be considered essential to do so. The password-policy can be set by the Full Administrator, by means either of the Couchbase CLI command setting-password-policy, or of the REST API — as described in Setting Password Policy. This allows you to specify that every Couchbase Server-password should:

It is recommended that passwords be managed with a password manager, and that each password be designed as one of the following:

Couchbase Server-users can typically authenticate by means of a username, specified with a password. The restrictions on username-design are that each should be unique to the cluster; and that none of the following characters be used: ( ) < > , ; : \ " / [ ] ? = { }. Note additionally that the @ character cannot be used in a username on any Couchbase Server version before 6.5.1. On versions 6.5.1 and beyond, a username may contain the @ character, as long as it does not occur at the start: for example, first.last@domain.

Usernames cannot be more than 128 UTF-8 characters in length; and it is recommended that they be no more than 64 UTF-8 characters in length, in order to ensure successful onscreen display.

Each user is associated with one or more roles, which permit limited access-privileges. Therefore, once a user has authenticated, their role-assignment is examined, and an appropriate degree of access is granted to them by Couchbase Server. See Authorization, for details.

Note that usernames and role-names are case sensitive.