Administrator's Guide

5 SDN Controller authentication
5.1 SDN Controller security guidelines
The HP VAN SDN controller communicates with different components, both internal and external
to the controller, via secure channels. This section documents these channels, their defaults, and
how to configure them in a deployment environment.
5.2 SDN Controller authentication
The SDN Controller identifies itself via Public-Key Infrastructure (PKI) for its communication with
external subsystems and other controllers. It uses a Java keystore and truststore to keep its private
key and public key respectively. For REST APIs, the controller does not rely on the truststore to
establish trust. Instead, it uses token authentication to authenticate the client. The client must present
a valid token via the X-Auth-Header to authenticate itself with the controller. Token authentication
is discussed more under “SDN Controller keystore and truststore locations and passwords ”
(page 64).
The controller ships with a self-signed certificate. Therefore, it is recommended that the self-signed
certificate be replaced by a certificate signed by a reputable Certificate Authority (CA). Also, the
default password for the keystore and truststore should be changed as well.
5.3 Creating SDN Controller keystore and truststore
1. Login to the system running the SDN Controller and stop the controller.
2. As the SDN user (i.e. sudo - sdn), do the following:
3. Back up your default /opt/sdn/admin/keystore and /opt/sdn/admin/truststore
to a safe location.
4. Create a new keystore using the following commands:
cd /opt/sdn/admin
rm keystore truststore
keytool -genkey -alias serverKey -keyalg rsa -keysize 2048 -keystore
keystore
You must specify a fully qualified domain for your server for the "first and last name" question
as some CAs, such as VeriSign, expect it.
5. Generate a CSR (Certificate Signing Request) for signing:
keytool -keystore keystore -certreq -alias serverKey -keyalg rsa
-file sdn-server.csr
6. Send the sdn-server.csr to a CA to be signed.
The CA will authenticate you and return a signed certificate and its CA certificate chain. We
assume the signed certificate from the CA is named signed.cer and the CA's certificate is
root.cer. If root.cer is from your own internal CA, then you need to import root.cer
into your browser as an authority.
7. Import the signed root certificate into your keystores:
keytool -importcert -trustcacerts -keystore keystore -file root.cer
-alias CARoot
keytool -importcert -trustcacerts -keystore truststore -file root.cer
-alias CARoot
5.1 SDN Controller security guidelines 63