Transport layer security and secure sockets layer

WebSphere® eXtreme Scale supports both TCP/IP and Transport Layer Security/Secure Sockets Layer (TLS/SSL) for secure communication between clients and servers.

Enable TLS/SSL in both directions

TLS/SSL is sometimes enabled in one direction. For example, the server public certificate is imported in the client truststore, but the client public certificate is not imported into the server truststore. However, WebSphere eXtreme Scale extensively uses data grid agents. A characteristic of a data grid agent is when the server sends responses back to the client, it creates a new connection. The eXtreme Scale server then acts as a client. Therefore, you must import the client public certificate into the server truststore.

Enable transport security for Oracle JDK

WebSphere eXtreme Scale requires IBM® Java™ Secure Sockets Extension (IBMJSSE) or the IBM Java Secure Sockets Extension 2 (IBMJSSE2). The IBMJSSE and IBMJSSE2 providers contain a reference implementation supporting SSL and Transport Layer Security (TLS) protocols and an application programming interface (API) framework.

The Oracle JDK does not ship the IBM JSSE and IBM JSSE2 providers, therefore transport security cannot be enabled with an Oracle JDK. In order to make this work, an Oracle JDK shipped with WebSphere Application Server is required. The WebSphere Application Server shipped Oracle JDK contains the IBM JSSE and IBM JSSE2 providers.

See Configuring a custom Object Request Broker for information about using a non-IBM JDK for WebSphere eXtreme Scale. If -Djava.endorsed.dirs is configured, it points to both the objectgridRoot/lib/endorsed and the JRE/lib/endorsed directories. The directory objectgridRoot/lib/endorsed is required so the IBM ORB is used, and the directory JRE/lib/endorsed is required to load the IBM JSSE and IBM JSSE2 providers.

Use the Java SE security tutorial - Step 4 to configure your required SSL properties, to create keystores and truststores, and to start secure servers in WebSphere eXtreme Scale.