Dynamic configuration updates in SSL
During the SSL runtime, dynamic configuration updates affect both inbound and outbound SSL endpoints. For inbound SSL endpoints, the changes implemented by the SSL channel are only affected by dynamic changes. For outbound SSL endpoints, all outbound connections inherit the new configuration changes.
With WAS v9, dynamic update functionality allows SSL configuration changes to take effect without restarting WebSphere Application Server.
To enable dynamic changes, in the administrative console click...
Security > SSL certificates and key management > Dynamically update the runtime when SSL configuration changes occur check box
Save changes and then synchronize the security.xml file with remote systems. A remote system must be able to confirm that dynamicallyUpdateSSLConfig=true is in the security.xml file.
The SSL runtime reloads the modified SSL configuration and creates a new SSLEngine for the modified connections associated with inbound endpoints. New outbound connections use the new configuration while existing connections continue to use the old SSLEngine object and are not affected.
Tip: Make dynamic changes to the SSL configuration during off-peak hours. Synchronization delays can negatively affect connections when you update SSL configurations during peak hours.
We can turn on and off the dynamicallyUpdateSSLConfig attribute in the security.xml file to ensure successful updates by doing the following actions:
- Set dynamicallyUpdateSSLConfig=On
- Save the updated configuration
- Synchronize the security.xml file with remote systems
- Set the dynamicallyUpdateSSLConfig attribute to Off.
Before turning off the dynamicallyUpdateSSLConfig attribute verify all nodes receive the changes. Test the changes in a test environment before updating the production environment.
Tip: Some SSL changes, especially administrative SSL changes, can cause server outages if you fail to test them first. When a change prevents trust between two endpoints, the endpoints cannot communicate with each other. Additionally, if administrative SSL connection updates cause system outages, we might need to disable the nodes after making corrective changes using the deployment manager. From the command line, we can manually synchronize the server to retrieve the new SSL changes, then restart the nodes.