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APM HTTPS and certificates

Hello everyone,

Here is the scenario I am in. We use HTTPS and require client certificates for the sites we want to monitor. I saw when adding a HTTPS user experience monitor there is a field for 'Certificate Subject' but the help file/online searches didn't really tell me what exactly that field is used for. The description just says "The component monitor can also test the security certificate" which leads me to believe it is looking at the certificate for the site at the URL provided which is not what I was looking for.

I was hoping I could identify a certificate in the monitor servers local store to use with the HTTPS request. Can anyone provide any insight into what specifically the certificate subject field is used for on the HTTPS monitor, and in particular if it is possible to attach a client certificate to the requests that get sent to the URL that is being monitored? (either via this monitor or some other way)

I am using APM 4.2.0 by the way.

Thanks for any help on this.

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Accepted answers

aLTeReGo

Essentially yes that is correct. The client certificate itself is not saved as part of the recorded transaction but rather the reference to the correct certificate used during the recording. So in a distributed player environment you will need to import the client certificate into the keystore of the computer where the player is installed in the same manor you do today for the workstation where the client certificate is used.

All comments

aLTeReGo

SAM does not support certificate based authentication. For websites and web based applications like the one you describe above I would recommend looking at Synthetic End User Monitor (SeUM) which does support client certificate authentication.

jjohnson0

Thanks for the response, that was what I was worried about. Looking through the product info for SeUM the only place I can see mention of client certificates is in the release notes where it says "Support of client certificates in recorder and playback". Just so I understand correctly does that mean it will record the client certificate information of the user during then recording? Then it will present that client certificate every time it polls that monitor?

aLTeReGo

jjohnson0

Gotcha. I think with some tweakage on the server that probably will work We will just have to setup a particular account for use in the recordings, mapped to the proper certificate. Thank you.