WebSphere Application Server Network Deployment supports centralized management of distributed nodes and application servers. This support inherently brings complexity, especially when security is included. Because everything is distributed, security plays an even larger role in ensuring that communications are appropriately secure between application servers and node agents, and between node agents (a node-specific configuration manager) and the deployment manager (a domain-wide, centralized configuration manager).
Because
the processes are distributed, the authentication mechanism that must be used
is Lightweight Third Party Authentication (LTPA). The LTPA tokens are encrypted,
signed and forwardable to remote processes. However, the tokens have expirations.
The SOAP connector, which is the default connector, is used for administrative
security and does not have retry logic for expired tokens. However, the protocol
is stateless so a new token is created for each request if there is not sufficient
time to run the request with the given time left in the token. An alternative
connector is the RMI connector, which is stateful, and has some retry logic
to correct expired tokens by resubmitting the requests after the error is
detected. Also, because tokens have time-specific expiration, the synchronization
of the system clocks is crucial to the proper operation of token-based validation.
If the clocks are off by too much (approximately 10-15 minutes), you can encounter
unrecoverable validation failures that can be avoided by having them in sync.
Verify that the clock time, date, and time zones are all the same between
systems. It is acceptable for nodes to be across time zones, provided that
the times are correct within the time zones (for example, 5 PM CST = 6 PM
EST, and so on).
Because
the processes are distributed, an authentication mechanism must be selected
that supports an authentication token such as Lightweight Third Party Authentication
(LTPA). The tokens are encrypted, signed and forwardable to remote processes.
However, the tokens have expiration times which are set on the WebSphere Application
Server administrative console. The SOAP connector which is the default connector,
is used for administrative security and does not have retry logic for expired
tokens. However, the protocol is stateless so a new token is created for each
request if there is not sufficient time to run the request with the given
time left in the token. An alternative connector is the Remote Method Invocation
(RMI) connector, which is stateful, and has some retry logic to correct expired
tokens by resubmitting the requests after the error is detected. Also, because
tokens have time-specific expiration, the synchronization of the system clocks
is crucial to the proper operation of token-based validation. If the clocks
are off by too much (approximately 10-15 minutes), you can encounter unrecoverable
validation failures that can be avoided by having them in sync. Verify that
the clock time, date, and time zones are all the same between systems. It
is acceptable for nodes to be across time zones, provided that the times are
correct within the time zones (for example, 5 PM CST = 6 PM EST, and so on).
The customization dialogs of WebSphere Application
Server for z/OS use the same certificate authority to generate certificates
for all servers within a given cell, including those of the node agents and
the deployment manager.
In this information ...Related concepts
Related tasks
| IBM Redbooks, demos, education, and more |