Chapter 19.
417
Configuring the Certificate System for
High Availability
This chapter explains how to create and configure the Red Hat Certificate System for high availability.
Certificate System subsystems can be cloned, or duplicated, and run on different machines. This
provides failover support by ensuring that Certificate System services continue even if the master
instance was goes offline.
19.1. High Availability Overview
High availability systems reduce unplanned outages and other problems by making one or more
subsystem clones available. When a host machine goes down, high availability systems can handle
requests and perform services from an alternate system seamlessly and uninterrupted.
High availability configurations also allow systems to be taken offline for repair, troubleshooting, or
other administrative tasks without interrupting the services of the system.
Typically, master and cloned instances are installed on different machines, and those machines are
placed behind a
load balancer
. The load balancer accepts HTTP and HTTPS requests made to the
Certificate System system and directs those requests appropriately between the two machines. In the
event that one machine fails, the load balancer will transparently redirect all requests to the machine
that is still running until the other machine is brought back online. Cloning is scalable by assigning the
same task, such as handling certificate requests, to separate instances on different machines.
The following subsystems can be cloned and run on different hosts:
• Certificate Manager (CA)
• Data Recovery Manager (DRM)
• Online Certificate Status Manager (OCSP)
• Token Key Service (TKS)
NOTE
The Token Processing System (TPS) does not support cloning.
19.1.1. Architecture of a Failover System
The diagram in
Figure 19.1, “Certificate System Example”
shows one way to set up a cloned
Certificate System subsystem. In this example, a separate OCSP subsystem is handling certificate
verification by taking advantage of CRL publishing.
Summary of Contents for CERTIFICATE SYSTEM 7.2 - MIGRATION GUIDE
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