Home > Servers > Systems Management > White Papers > Eliminate the need to schedule, track, and maintain SSL certificate renewals with new feature in iDRAC9 v4.0 > How iDRAC9 uses automation to make life easier for administrators
Embedded in the latest Dell EMC™ PowerEdge™ servers is iDRAC9. This embedded management controller makes it easier for administrators to deploy and update the PowerEdge servers in their data center through extensive system provisioning automation, and now also offers an option to automate SSL certificate enrollment and renewal for Datacenter license customers. New servers require enrollment with the certificate authority, which iDRAC9 automates with Automatic Certificate Enrollment after an initial one-time setup. In this study, we focus on time savings from certificate renewals.
While SSL certificates used to have lengthy validity periods—some as much as five years or more—current industry standards set the limit at 27 months to ensure that security measures are up to date.1 Many organizations choose to set the validity period to one year, while others with stringent security level agreements may update their SSL certificates twice a year, quarterly, or even more frequently. All these factors affect how beneficial iDRAC SSL certificate renewal automation will be to your specific organization.
Using a Dell EMC PowerEdge R640 server, we tested the iDRAC9 v4.0 SSL certificate renewal automation feature to see how much time and effort Automatic Certificate Enrollment could save compared to doing the same task manually. To learn the step-by-step details of our testing, see the science behind the report.
1 Vincent Lynch, “3-Year Certificates to be Eliminated in Industry-Wide Change,” accessed December 16, 2019, https://www.digicert.com/blog/3-year-certificates-eliminated-industry-wide-change/.
Dell Technologies offers a wide-ranging portfolio of servers to meet a variety of business needs. From scalable rack servers to modular infrastructure solutions and more, Dell Technologies embeds iDRAC9 v4.0 in PowerEdge servers to offer management functionality out of the box with no need for additional hardware.
To learn more about Dell EMC PowerEdge servers, visit https://www.delltechnologies.com/en-us/servers/ index.htm.