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SDX 14000 FIPS appliances

September 11, 2024

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Note

The firmware versions listed under “NetScaler Release 12.1-FIPS” and “NetScaler Release 12.1-NDcPP” in the NetScaler downloads page are not supported on the MPX 14000 FIPS or SDX 14000 FIPS platforms. These platforms can use other latest NetScaler firmware versions available on the downloads page.

A NetScaler SDX appliance is a multitenant platform on which you can provision and manage multiple virtual NetScaler instances. The SDX appliance addresses cloud computing and multitenancy requirements by allowing a single administrator to configure and manage the appliance and delegate the administration of each hosted instance to tenants.

A NetScaler SDX 14030/14060/14080 FIPS appliance provides the capabilities of an SDX appliance with FIPS functionality. It is equipped with a tamper-proof (tamper-evident) cryptographic module—a Cavium CNN3560-NFBE-G—designed to comply with the FIPS 140-2 Level-3 specifications (from release 12.0 build 56.x). The Critical Security Parameters (CSPs), primarily the server’s private-key, are securely stored and generated inside the cryptographic module. This module is also referred to as the Hardware Security Module (HSM). The CSPs are never accessed outside the boundaries of the HSM. Only the superuser (nsroot) can perform operations on the keys stored inside the HSM.

A NetScaler SDX 14030/14060/14080 FIPS appliance contains one FIPS HSM module with 63 cores. The FIPS HSM module can be partitioned up to a maximum of 32 partitions. The SDX administrator can assign dedicated key storage, cryptographic resources, and number of crypto SSL FIPS cores to each partition. Keys and resources allocated to a partition are dedicated and secure and any other partition cannot access or share them.

The FIPS HSM partition that you create can be assigned or attached to a VPX instance at the time of provisioning the instance, or later by editing the instance. The FIPS partition created and attached to an instance acts like a virtual HSM module for that instance.

The VPX instances on an SDX 14030/14060/14080 FIPS appliance are assigned a FIPS virtual function (VF) partition, which is treated as an isolated FIPS virtual card or HSM. Therefore, the steps to configure a FIPS partition inside a VPX instance are similar to the steps to configure an MPX FIPS appliance. For compliance details, see the security policy details on the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) website.

For information about configuring FIPS appliances in a high availability setup, see Configure FIPS appliances in an HA setup.

Important

Each key includes a private and a public key. As a result, it occupies two key spaces. Therefore, the maximum number of keys is limited to one less than half the key store size.

The SDX 14000 FIPS platform supports a hybrid FIPS mode. This mode allows you to offload part of the encryption and decryption activity to a non-FIPS card. For more information, see Hybrid FIPS mode.

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SDX 14000 FIPS appliances

September 11, 2024

Contributed by:

September 11, 2024

Contributed by:

SDX 14000 FIPS appliances

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