Configure a CMC as a consumer

Configure a Central Management Console (CMC) to be a consumer of data transmitted through a data diode. This configuration ensures secure, one-way communication from a producer to a consumer.

Before you begin

Make sure that you have:

About this task

To allow secure file transfer, the data diode must authenticate to the consumer CMC via secure shell (SSH).

Note:
Different types of data diodes are supported. This procedure does not go into detail about the data diode configuration.

Procedure

  1. Open the consumer CMC.
  2. In the top navigation bar, select Administration icon - which looks like a gear cog
    The administration page opens.
  3. In the Settings section, select Synchronization settings.
    The Synchronization settings page opens.
  4. Select Data Diode.
    The Data Diode page shows.
  5. In the Status section, select Consumer.
    The Token field shows.
  6. Select Save.
  7. If an SSH key pair does not already exist on the data diode, create one.
    On the data diode, generate a user-owned RSA 4096 or ECDSA key for the user who will manage file transfers to the CMC. For example, you can use ssh-keygen to do this.
    1. On the data diode, use this command: ssh-keygen -t rsa -b 4096 -f ~/.ssh/id_rsa
    2. Copy the content of the public key (id_rsa.pub) to the file /data/ssh_n2os-datadiode/ssh_authorized_keys in the CMC.
      Attention:
      Copy as raw text, without formatting. Do not use copy-paste from Microsoft Word or other WYSIWYG text editors.
      Note:
      The n2os-datadiode user is preconfigured on the CMC for data diode file transfers. The directory and authorized key file should already exist.
  8. Transfer files via SSH
    1. Make sure that the correct permissions are set for the transfer of the files.
    2. To send files from the producer to the consumer, enter the command: scp <yourfile.ext> n2os-datadiode@<consumer-cmc-ip>:~
      The ~ symbol is assigned to the n2os-datadiode target folder: /var/data_diode_in/spool
      Note:
      The CMC will automatically collect and process the files.

What to do next

Do the Configure a CMC as a producer or the Configure a Guardian as a producer procedure.