About This Guide; Who Should Read This Guide; Recommended Knowledge; What Is In This Guide - Red Hat CERTIFICATE SYSTEM 7.2 - ADMINISTRATION Administration Manual

About This Guide

This guide explains how to install, configure, and maintain the Red Hat Certificate System and how to
use it for issuing and managing certificates to end entities such as web browsers, users, servers, and
virtual private network (VPN) clients.

1. Who Should Read This Guide

This guide is intended for experienced system administrators planning to deploy the Certificate
System. Certificate System agents should refer to the Certificate System Agent's Guide for information
on how to perform agent tasks, such as handling certificate requests and revoking certificates.

2. Recommended Knowledge

Before reading this guide, be familiar with the following concepts:
• Intranet, extranet, and Internet security and the role of digital certificates in a secure enterprise,
including the following topics:
• Encryption and decryption
• Public keys, private keys, and symmetric keys
• Significance of key lengths
• Digital signatures
• Digital certificates, including different types of digital certificates
• The role of digital certificates in a public-key infrastructure (PKI)
• Certificate hierarchies
• LDAP and Red Hat Directory Server
• Public-key cryptography and the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) protocol, including the following:
• SSL cipher suites
• The purpose of and major steps in the SSL handshake

3. What Is in This Guide

This guide contains the following elements:
Chapter 1, Overview
•
works, an architectural overview of Certificate System, and lists the standards used in the product.
Chapter 2, Installation and Configuration
•
Chapter 3, Administrative Basics
•
that is common to all subsystems such as using the administrative console, starting and stopping
the server, viewing and setting logs, and running self-tests.
lists Certificate System features, an overview of how the Certificate System
provides step-by-step installation instructions.
provides information and procedures for performing configuration
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