Brocade Communications Systems 53-1001763-02, Administrator'S Manual

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Fabric OS Administrator’s Guide 123
53-1001763-02
Secure Sockets Layer protocol
6
SSL configuration overview
You configure for SSL by obtaining, installing, and activating digital certificates for SSL support.
Certificates are required on all switches that are to be accessed through SSL.
Also, you must install a certificate in the Java Plug-in on the management workstation, and you may
need to add a certificate to your Web browser.
Configuring for SSL involves these main steps, which are shown in detail in the next sections.
1. Choose a certificate authority (CA).
2. Generate the following items on each switch:
a. A public and private key by using the secCertUtil genkey command.
b. A certificate signing request (CSR) by using the secCertUtil gencsr command.
3. Store the CSR on a file server by using the secCertUtil export command.
4. Obtain the certificates from the CA.
You can request a certificate from a CA through a Web browser. After you request a certificate,
the CA either sends certificate files by e-mail (public) or gives access to them on a remote host
(private). Typically, the CA provides the certificate files listed in
Table 21 . Brocade supports
.pem, .crt. and .cer files from the Certificate Authority.
5. On each switch, install the certificate. Once the certificate is loaded on the switch, HTTPS
starts automatically.
6. If necessary, install the root certificate to the browser on the management workstation.
7. Add the root certificate to the Java Plug-in keystore on the management workstation.
Certificate authorities
To ease maintenance and allow secure out-of-band communication between switches, consider
using one certificate authority (CA) to sign all management certificates for a fabric. If you use
different CAs, management services operate correctly, but the Web Tools Fabric Events button is
unable to retrieve events for the entire fabric.
Each CA (for example, Verisign or GeoTrust) has slightly different requirements; for example, some
generate certificates based on IP address, while others require an FQDN, and most require a
1024-bit public/private key while some may accept a 2048-bit key. Consider your fabric
configuration, check CA Web sites for requirements, and gather all the information that the CA
requires.
TABLE 21
SSL certificate files
Certificate file Description
name .crt The switch certificate.
name Root.crt The root certificate. Typically, this certificate is already installed in the browser,
but if not, you must install it.
name CA.crt The CA certificate. It must be installed in the browser to verify the validity of the
server certificate or server validation fails.