Two types of service accounts
Gateway supports two types of service accounts, each suited for different use cases: Local service accounts- Created and managed entirely within Gateway using the admin API
- No external identity provider required
- Gateway generates credentials with configurable time-to-live
- Ideal for sharing data with external partners without managing a separate identity provider
- Only available in Gateway-managed authentication mode
- Managed by external identity providers (OIDC, mTLS certificates)
- Can be mapped to friendly names in Gateway for better readability
- Original identity from provider (like Azure UUID) is preserved but aliased
- Used when integrating with existing enterprise identity systems
- Works in both Gateway-managed and Kafka-managed modes
Benefits
- Flexible identity management: choose between self-managed or provider-managed identities
- Simplified access control: apply and using friendly names
- Audit trail: all service account activity logged in Gateway audit logs
- Virtual Cluster association: link service accounts to specific for multi-tenancy