Specifications

EMC Secure Remote Support Gateway for Linux Release 2.24 Operations Guide

Introduction

Communication to EMC

All outbound communication between the customer’s site and EMC

is initiated from the customer’s site by the Gateway Clients over port

443 and 8443. Using industry standard Secure Sockets Layer (SSL)

encryption over the Internet and an EMC-signed digital certificate for

authentication, the Gateway Client creates a secure communication

tunnel.

IMPORTANT

Port 8443 is not required for functionality, however without this

port being opened, there will be a significant decrease in remote

support performance, which will directly impact time to resolve

issues on the end devices.

Gateway Clients use industry-accepted bilateral authentication for

the EMC servers and the Gateway Clients. Each Gateway Client has a

unique digital certificate that is verified by EMC whenever a

Gateway Client makes a connection attempt. The Gateway Client

then verifies EMC's server certificate. Only when the mutual SSL

authentication passes does the Gateway Client transmit messages to

EMC, securing the connection against spoofing and

man-in-the-middle attacks.

The Gateway Clients use the SSL tunnel to EMC to perform the

following functions:

◆ Heartbeat polling

◆ Remote notification

◆ Remote access

Each relies on the SSL tunnel, but communication processes and

protocols within the tunnel vary by function. Each function is

discussed in the following sections.

Heartbeat polling Heartbeat polling is described in the following sections:

◆ “To EMC by the Gateway Client” on page 20

◆ “To EMC devices managed by the Gateway Client” on page 21

To EMC by the Gateway Client

The heartbeat is a regular outbound communication, at a default

interval of 30 seconds, from the Gateway Clients to the EMC

enterprise. Each heartbeat contains a small datagram that identifies