Our clients are mainly nss_ldap connecting with starttls so looks like our best bet is either wildcard cert or SubjectAltName. SubjectAltName seems a bit more complicated to do, as in openssl I will have to edit the openssl.cnf file and add all the hostnames and recreate the CSR. We use a local CA here for signing all the certificates used in protected communications.

Thanks,
Daniel


On 11-08-27 3:45 PM, Marco Schirrmeister wrote:
To avoid all this name problems and to keep things simple I use a wildcard certificate.

This cert is also used on the real servers and on the load balancer.

The clients talk only the a load balancer. Where I have 2 ip addresses. One for ldapwrite.domain.com and one for ldapread.domain.com
The load balancer terminates the ssl connection for port 636 and creates a new session to the backend server.

The reason that I have also the wildcard cert also on the backend servers is for secure connections over 389.
The load balancer doesn't speak the ldap protocol, so if a client is doing a starttls he would get the cert from the real server.

If 389 is not needed, then I think 1 or 2 certs on a load balancer would be enough. 
The replication works also with self-signed certs if configured correctly.


--
Marco



On Aug 26, 2011, at 10:35 PM, Daniel Qian wrote:

Still not sure how you did it. Are you saying you set the same certificate in slapd and played with DNS to make it look like only one server(URL) to everyone?

Thanks,
Daniel

On 11-08-26 4:03 PM, Chris Jacobs wrote:
What I did:
* setup servers behind VIP
* obtain cert with primary name of vip DNS w/ secondary names of the servers.

That way, the servers can sync/tryst each other via the same cert used by clients.

Note: some clients (lookin at you Firefox) won't use the primary name if subjectaltname exists - so include primary name in the alt names JIC.

- chris

Chris Jacobs, Systems Administrator, Technology Services Group
Apollo Group | Apollo Marketing and Product Development�  |�  Aptimus, Inc.
2001 6th Ave�  |�  Suite 3200�  |�  Seattle, WA 98121
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email chris.jacobs@apollogrp.edu

From the openldap website the two nodes have to use different URLs like below:

       syncrepl      rid=001
                     provider=ldap://ldap-sid2.example.com
                     bindmethod=simple
                     binddn="cn=mirrormode,dc=example,dc=com"
                     credentials=mirrormode
                     searchbase="dc=example,dc=com"
                     schemachecking=on
                     type=refreshAndPersist
                     retry="60 +"
and 

       syncrepl      rid=001
                     provider=ldap://ldap-sid1.example.com
                     bindmethod=simple
                     binddn="cn=mirrormode,dc=example,dc=com"
                     credentials=mirrormode
                     searchbase="dc=example,dc=com"
                     schemachecking=on
                     type=refreshAndPersist
                     retry="60 +"
I can set two different certificates so that TLS is fine for sync between the two nodes. However we will have regular Ldap client access these two nodes behind a loadbalancer over TLS too. Obviously the client can't connect with ldap-sid2.example.com, nor with ldap-sid1.example.com. So what is the solution to this scenario? Setup a pool of consumers with same hostname?

Thanks,
Daniel

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