I am trying to add an Admin Client authentication key to my Service Fabric cluster created using the portal.
I keep getting this error (Failed to submit updates to 'admin client certificate' for cluster)-
The background - I cannot access the Service Fabric explorer after creating a cluster. I am guessing that this is because I don't have an admin client authentication set up yet.
How can I fix this error?
From my experience with Azure Service Fabric Cluster you need to have the certificate added to add client certificate. But if you set it up right should connect to it without setting new creds.
Steps below.
While setting up the cluster if its for testing you can use a self-signed certificate from Key Vault, the process can create one for you.
At the summary page of the Cluster setup you will get a link to obtain certificate as you will need that to access Fabric Cluster.
Make sure you download and install certificate (pfx) to computer's store. No password is needed.
Once the Service Fabric cluster is fully deployed click on the 'Explorer' button or the link to open portal. Make sure you are on IE or Edge because Chrome or Firefox will not like the self-signed certificate
The browser should trigger an authentication, please select the certificate we installed previous. If that is not showing as default use the more option to find it. If it's not on the list it means that certificate was not install.
That should authenticate you and give you access to the Service Fabric Cluster.
Hope this information was helpful.
You need to make sure that the SF provision is not undergoing updates first.
Also you cannot access the SF management console with the cert that was used to secure the cluster. You will need to generate a self-signed (unless you already have a CA cert) cert and use the thumbprint from that cert to import into the "Admin Client" in SF security section
This is the cert you need to also import to your client machine Cert repository
Related
I've created a secured SF cluster from the portal, but I can't connect to the explorer from the browser or deploy my app from VS. I have the cluster certificate (the one it makes you create on a Key Vault when you first deploy the cluster) installed on my machine. I got the .pfx file from the Key Vault and installed it on my Windows machine both with double click/wizard and with Powershell Import-PfxCertificate cmdlet.
Still after that, VS says Failed to contact the server. Please try again later or get help from "How to configure secure connections"
I tried added an client "admin" certificate, but it only asks me for the Thumbprint or the subject name, where I put the ones from the previously created cluster certificate. I don't really know if I need to buy a client certificate to make it work, or where do I get it?
And as I said, I can't access to the explorer using the browser either. Any ideas?
Here some screenshots:
This error message might be:
- The certificate issuer authority is not trusted
- because the certificate you installed is not valid or does not target the domain you are trying to access.
if the certificate issuer is not trusted, you might have to:
Trust then, please see this link
Or, get a new certificate from a trusted and execute the steps below
If the certificate is invalid, or misconfigured:
The message is chrome telling you that the certificate is not valid, and you can proceed on your own risk. You should be okay if you click Proceed to xyz.dev.eastus.cloudapp.com.
To deploy applications from Visual Studio to the cluster, you have to install the PFX certificate in the machine, and add the thumbprint to the publish profile file. See more in this link
How to make it work:
Register the domain you want, here I will say as www.example.com
Register the CNAME record on your DNS provider pointing to your Service Fabric default domain likexyz.dev.eastus..cloudapp.com.
Get a PFX certificate from a trusted authority, or your own self-signed certificate if it is for internal use only.
Add the certificate to key vault
Configure the VMSS to use the certificates from key vault
Update your cluster configuration with your certificate thumbprint
This link and this link provides the documentation on how to setup the cluster certificates.
And the following link has a detailed explanation how setup applications:
https://ronaldwildenberg.com/custom-domain-name-and-certificate-for-your-azure-service-fabric-cluster/
If you just want to create secure cluster for Dev and Test purposes, you could just create from the portal and let azure generate the correct certificate for you. For production workloads, you should create your certificates, Please take a look at this link for more info.
I followed this link https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/vpn-gateway/vpn-gateway-howto-point-to-site-rm-ps#Certificates to create a VPN in Azure. So,
I created a root certificate and uploaded to management portal.
Used PS script to create the VPN
Created client certificate and installed the VPN Client package.
My VPN is working as expected. My question is now can I delete this certificate from management store now ? Is it must to upload the certificate to management store to create this VPN ? How does the authentication works in this case ?
My question is now can I delete this certificate from management store
now ?
By default, we can't delete this certificate.
Is it must to upload the certificate to management store to create
this VPN ?
Yes, we have to upload the certificate to it, it is a by design behavior.
We can publish our public certificate to Internet, we only should keep the private certificate.
How does the authentication works in this case ?
Here a blog about how does certificate-based authentication work, please refer to this link.
you cannot delete the root certificate that you uploaded to Azure. It is used to authenticate the certificates presented by the connecting clients.
I'm settings up a Service Fabric cluster in Azure and want to run a web API (using .NET Core) over https. I want to use my CA-signed wildcard (*.mydomain.com) certificate to access this API. But I'm a bit confused as to where I use it when I create the cluster, is it the cluster or client certificate? I'm thinking the client certificate, but the documentation states that this is for admin tools (i.e. the Explorer), so I'm unsure on how to proceed.
And yes I've read a ton of posts and resources, but I still find this confusing.
There are three certificate types. Here is a summary overview of them.
The Cluster certificate is used for the Explorer endpoint and is deployed to the primary nodes. So if you add your *.mydomain.com wildcard cert there, and CNAME something (e.g. manage.mydomain.com) to [yourcluster].[region].cloudapp.azure.com, then when you hit your management endpoint that cert will be what will be presented to the web browser.
The Reverse Proxy SSL certificate is deployed to each of the nodes and is used when using the built-in reverse proxy feature of Service Fabric. In this case this is what is being used when you hit https://api.mydomain.com/YourAppName/YourService/Resource (where api.mydomain.com is another CNAME to yourcluster.region.cloudapp.azure.com). This is used as an alternative to running your own reverse proxy or other offloading layer (Application Gateway, IIS, nginx, API Management, etc).
The Client certificates are used in place of Azure Active Directory authentication to the management endpoint. So instead of managing users in AAD (with the _Cluster AAD application and the Admin / Read-Only roles), you manage access by handing out management certificates (Admin or Read-Only) to your trusted users.
You can also have secondaries these certificates to use in certificate rollover situations.
The way we are using it is to have Application gateway configured in front of service fabric cluster, and web certificate is uploaded to Application Gateway (and dns is pointing to application gateway) In that scenario SSL is terminated at application gateway.
Another possibility is to terminate SSL at each node in service fabric cluster, in this scenario you would need to ensure that certificate gets deployed to each of the nodes.
As for cluster vs client certificate dilemma, I am also confused, but I think the answer is neither. Client certificate is not for sure since this certificate is used to identify you as admin when running service fabric admin ps scripts.
I do not think it is cluster certificate either, here is what MS docs say what it is used for:
Cluster and server certificate is required to secure a cluster and prevent unauthorized access to it. It provides cluster security in two ways:
Cluster authentication: Authenticates node-to-node communication for cluster federation. Only nodes that can prove their identity with this certificate can join the cluster.
Server authentication: Authenticates the cluster management endpoints to a management client, so that the management client knows it is talking to the real cluster. This certificate also provides an SSL for the HTTPS management API and for Service Fabric Explorer over HTTPS.
as far as I am reading into it, this certificate is used for internal cluster authentication, and it is also used so your management tools can be asured that they are working with right cluster.
How can I install a certificate into an Azure Web App so that my azure webapp can communicate with a remote service via SSL (this particular certificate is not signed by a public CA)
I generated an ssl certificate with openssl and when I install it to the trusted root certificate authentication store on my local computer the runs fine. However when I upload the cert via the management portal I get errors that the certificate isn't trusted (which is correct) and the correct error for when a certificate is not installed.
How can I install a private SSL certificate into the trusted root certificate store on an azure web app?
Unfortunately, we cannot add a certificate to the trusted certificate authority on an Azure Web App. The security implications would be quite bad if that were possible. More detail info please refer to another SO thread.
But We can use Azure Cloud Service that allowed us to do that. More info please refer to the document.
If we want to install certificates to Personal certificate store , we could upload a .pfx file to the Azure App, and add an App setting named WEBSITE_LOAD_CERTIFICATES with its value set to the thumbprint of the certificate will make it accessible to your web application. Then the certificates will be installed to the Personal certificate store . More detail please refer to Using Certificates in Azure Websites Applications.
How to obtained an SSL certificate please refer to the official document Secure your app's custom domain with HTTPS.
The easiest way to get an SSL certificate that meets all the requirements is to buy one in the Azure portal directly. This article shows you how to do it manually and then bind it to your custom domain in App Service.
I am developing a windows service application that will run on customer PC/servers and access a Web API endpoint hosted in an Azure Website. It needs to authenticate the user, and I would prefer not storing credentials on the customer's machine. So, I've landed on client certificates to authenticate the users. I have this working against a local, non-Azure Website IIS instance with self-signed certificates. However, I'm unable to get it working in an Azure Website.
As far as I can tell, there are two issues that I'm not finding much documentation on:
How do I install my own CA certificate in the Trusted Root of the Website instance(s)? Or will this only work with CA certificates that are already trusted?
How do I enable "Accept Client Certificates" for this application? In IIS you do this under "SSL Settings". Documentation indicates that modifying the system.webServer/security/access node of app.config will accomplish this, but obviously you can't do that in Websites. Documentation for websites suggests this node is unlocked for use in web.config, however adding that node results in an error "The page cannot be displayed because an internal server error has occurred.", even if custom errors is off.
For Azure web sites vs web roles client authentication options are rather limited. Websites don't let you run programs with elevated permissions, which is required for making IIS changes and storing certificates into the trusted root.
There's a way to configure you website to always (you don't get the benefit of making it optional as with IIS 'Accept' configuration) request client certificate. This feature is currently only available through Azure management REST API, you can't access it through the portal UI. You can find more information here.
Essentially you turn on clientCertEnabled website setting to true. The mechanics of this option are different from traditional client authentication where server needs to have a CA certificate with which the client cert is signed in its trusted root. The server doesn't run any validation on the client certificate, the application needs to run the cert check itself, which comes in a request header "X-ARR-ClientCert". GetClientCertificate() extension method on HttpRequestMessage will parse it automatically.
Alternatively, you can host your Web API as a web role. That gives access to running startup tasks with elevated permissions that allows access to trusted root and making IIS configurations, more details/examples here. You can either copy the CA certificate to the app folder or upload to the user store via Azure portal so that it is available for copying over to the trusted root in a startup task. IIS changes can be made via “Microsoft.Web.Administration” library available as NuGet package through ServerManager class.
For question 2, here's a blog post on how to install client certificates on Azure Websites: http://azure.microsoft.com/blog/2014/10/27/using-certificates-in-azure-websites-applications/
For question 1, you can't install your own CA certs as trusted root certificates, but if you have certs from a CA that's already trusted then you can use them without any issues.