You can customize certificate revocation checking, and you can specify where vCenter Single Sign-On looks for information about revoked certificates.
You can customize the behavior by using the Platform Services Controller Web interface or by using the sso-config script. The settings that you select depend in part on what the CA supports.
- If revocation checking is disabled, vCenter Single Sign-On ignores any CRL or OCSP settings. vCenter Single Sign-On does not perform checks on any certificates.
- If revocation checking is enabled, the recommended setup depends on the PKI setup.
- OCSP only
- If the issuing CA supports an OCSP responder, enable OCSP and disable CRL as failover for OCSP.
- CRL only
- If the issuing CA does not support OSCP, enable CRL checking and disable OSCP checking.
- Both OSCP and CRL
- If the issuing CA supports both an OCSP responder and a CRL, vCenter Single Sign-On checks the OCSP responder first. If the responder returns an unknown status or is not available, vCenter Single Sign-On checks the CRL. For this case, enable both OCSP checking and CRL checking, and enable CRL as failover for OCSP.
- If revocation checking is enabled, advanced users can specify the following additional settings.
- OSCP URL
- By default, vCenter Single Sign-On checks the location of the OCSP responder that is defined in the certificate being validated. You can explicitly specify a location if the Authority Information Access extension is absent from the certificate or if you want to override it.
- Use CRL from certificate
- By default, vCenter Single Sign-On checks the location of the CRL that is defined in the certificate being validated. Disable this option if the CRL Distribution Point extension is absent from the certificate or if you want to override the default.
- CRL location
- Use this property if you disable Use CRL from certificate and you want to specify a location (file or HTTP URL) where the CRL is located.
You can further limit which certificates vCenter Single Sign-On accepts by adding a certificate policy.
Prerequisites
- Verify that your environment uses Platform Services Controller version 6.5, and that you use vCenter Server version 6.0 or later. Platform Services Controller version 6.0 Update 2 supports smart card authentication, but the setup procedure is different.
- Verify that an enterprise Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) is set up in your environment, and that certificates meet the following requirements:
- A User Principal Name (UPN) must correspond to an Active Directory account in the Subject Alternative Name (SAN) extension.
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The certificate must specify Client Authentication in the Application Policy or Enhanced Key Usage field or the browser does not show the certificate.
- Verify that the Platform Services Controller Web interface certificate is trusted by the end user’s workstation. Otherwise, the browser does not attempt the authentication.
- Add an Active Directory identity source to vCenter Single Sign-On.
- Assign the vCenter Server Administrator role to one or more users in the Active Directory identity source. Those users can then perform management tasks because they can authenticate and they have vCenter Server administrator privileges.
Note: The administrator of the vCenter Single Sign-On domain, [email protected] by default, cannot perform smart card authentication.
