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Tore_F_265730
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Jun 24, 2018

F5 monitor with client certificate chain

Hi

 

I am attempting to set up a monitor with client certificate authentication and I can configure the monitor with the key/cert appropriately, but there does not seem to be a method for sending the full trust chain with the request like I can with a server profile.

 

Can I set up a monitor that sends the trust chain with the client certificate during SSL? If so, how can I do this? If you have a link to documentation, that would be great too.

 

Regards

 

2 Replies

  • You may be able to create your client auth certificate with the appropriate intermediate/root certificates appended. You will need to test this - I'm not sure if it will work.

     

    Alternatively, on version 13.1.0.x, you could enable In-TMM Monitoring

     

    K11323537: Configuring In-TMM monitoring

     

    This new feature allows TMM-based HTTPS monitors to use an existing server-SSL profile to establish SSL/TLS to a pool member.

     

    However - this comes with a caveat...

     

    Once you enable In-TMM monitors via the db variable, you will need to update all existing HTTPS monitors to use a suitable server-side ssl profile. There is no current migration process from bigd (OpenSSL-based) settings to TMM (F5 crypto) monitor settings, and unmodified HTTPS monitors will fail in the config due to an incompatible cipher string.

     

    YMMV

     

  • In addition to the reply of Simon_Blakely I want to add,  that with In-TMM monitoring the healthchecks will definitely be send through TMM interfaces only.

    Before it was possible, that a healthcheck went out through the MGMT interface in case there was a better route to the node.

    With In-TMM monitoring you now have the ability to use SNI (server name indication). Previous TMOS versions required using external monitors to get this done.