How to Configure SSL for DataStax Enterprise

Configure SSL for DataStax Enterprise (DSE) by implementing Client Certificate Authentication. Following this approach, each node verifies the service or client making a request against a local truststore to validate that the certificate was issued by a known Certificate Authority (CA).

Creating SSL certificates, keystores, and truststores

You can implement SSL using CA signed certificates signed by well-known CAs, or by creating your own root CA. DataStax recommends using certificates signed by a CA to reduce SSL certificate management tasks. However, you can use self-signed certificates with DSE, which supports SSL certificates in local and external keystores.

Creating your own CA in a production environments typically involves using an intermediary certificate chain, where the root CA signs one or more intermediate certificates with its private key. These intermediary certificates chain together to link back to the root CA, which owns one or more trusted roots.

Where to configure SSL

DSE supports SSL encryption between nodes (node-to-node communication) and between clients and nodes (client-to-node communication). You can use SSL to encrypt in-flight data for the following DSE services and clients.