Chapter 3: DSM V6000 Hardware Appliance
nShield Connect Integration
DSM Installation and Configuration Guide
Copyright 2009 - 2020 Thales Group. All rights reserved.
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High Availability
A DSM high availability (HA) cluster must consist of homogeneous appliance types. For example, if you plan to create
an HA cluster for a network HSM-enabled DSM, then all nodes in the cluster must be network HSM-enabled
appliances. As this feature is supported on both V6000 and virtual DSMs, an HA cluster for a network HSM-enabled
DSM may consist of both V6000 and virtual DSMs, as long as they are all network HSM-enabled.
Network HSM-enabled DSMs cannot be clustered with V6100 appliances—the V6100 creates its own Security World,
whereas a network HSM-enabled DSM belongs to the nShield Connect Security World, and since all nodes in a
cluster have to belong to the same Security World, the V6100 and network HSM-enabled DSM appliances cannot be
combined.
When creating a cluster, Thales recommends that you configure at least two or more nShield Connect HSMs for fault
tolerance. Refer to the nShield Connect HSM documentation for information about configuring additional nShield
Connect HSMs.
Each DSM node in a network HSM-enabled DSM cluster can be configured with one or more nShield Connect HSMs
for fault tolerance, provided they all belong to the same Security World. See
"Configuring High Availability for network
for more about network HSM-enabled DSM high availability clusters.
System and Software Requirements
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DSM V6000 or virtual appliances with 6.0.3 or higher, of the DSM firmware. This feature is only supported on
v6.0.3 or higher of the DSM firmware, you must upgrade your system to this version to enable this feature. See
Chapter 6: "Upgrade and Migration" on page 112
for details about upgrading your system.
Note
The V6000 appliance does not support network HSM.
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At least one nShield Connect HSM and its corresponding remote file system (RFS) deployed on the network. The
nShield HSM must belong to a Security World. If there are more than one nShield Connect HSMs in the
deployment, they must all belong to the same Security World for the DSM to connect to them. Thales
recommends that you add another nShield Connect HSM to the Security World for fault tolerance.
Note
Client licenses are required for each nShield Connect HSM that is configured for the DSMs—the number
of client licenses required per nShield Connect HSM is equal to the number of DSMs used.
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The nShield Connect HSM used to enable this feature can be either of the following; nShield , or nShield
Connect XC. For more information about configuring the nShield Connect HSM and RFS, refer to the relevant
nShield Connect HSM user documentation.
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Port 9004 must be opened on the network path between the DSMs and the nShield Connect HSM(s) to enable
communication between the DSMs, the nShield Connect HSM(s) and its associated RFS.
Configuring nShield Connect HSM with DSM
The following is the overall sequence of procedures to enable this feature:
1. Deploy and configure an nShield Connect HSM and its associated RFS
2. Add the DSM as a client to the nShield Connect HSM
3. Add the nShield Connect HSM to the DSM
If you plan to setup a network HSM-enabled DSM HA cluster, you can do so after the initial node is configured, see
"Configuring High Availability for network HSM-enabled DSM" on page 66
for more information.