APC AP7900 manual Choosing a method for your system, Advantages

Switched Rack PDU

USER’S GUIDE

®

Choosing a method for your system

Using the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) protocol, you can choose any of the following methods for using digital certificates.

Method 1: Use the auto-generated default certificate. When you enable SSL, you must reboot the Rack PDU. During rebooting, if no server certificate exists on the Rack PDU, the Rack PDU generates a default server certificate that is self-signed but that you cannot configure.

This method has the following advantages and disadvantages:

•Advantages:

–Before they are transmitted, the user name and password for Rack PDU access and all data to and from the Rack PDU are encrypted.

–You can use this default server certificate to provide encryption- based security while you are setting up either of the other two digital certificate options, or you can continue to use it for the benefits of encryption that SSL provides.

•Disadvantages:

–The Rack PDU takes up to 5 minutes to create this certificate, and the Web interface is not available during that time. (This delay occurs the first time you log on after you enable SSL.)

–This method does not include the browser-based authentication provided by a CA certificate (a certificate signed by a Certificate Authority) as Methods 2 and 3 provide. There is no CA Certificate cached in the browser. Therefore, whenever you log on to the Rack PDU, the browser generates a security alert, indicating that a certificate signed by a trusted authority is not available and asking if you want to proceed.

–The default server certificate on the Rack PDU has the Rack PDU’s serial number in place of a valid common name (the DNS name or the IP address of the Rack PDU). Therefore, although the Rack

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