About machines¶

A machine connects Certificate Manager - SaaS to a system where certificates are installed, such as a load balancer, firewall, web application firewall, web server, cloud service, or keystore. Through the machine, Certificate Manager - SaaS discovers the certificates already on the system and provisions certificates to it, so you can track and renew them from one place.

How machines work¶

You create a machine once, in the New Machine wizard. On the Properties step, you choose the machine type, name the machine, choose its owning team, and enter the connection details. If the machine type supports discovery, the Discovery step sets which certificates discovery looks for and when it runs. If the machine type supports provisioning, the Provisioning step sets when Certificate Manager - SaaS pushes certificates to the system. Each machine type's create page walks through every step.

Discovery finds the certificates on the system and records each place a certificate is installed as an installation. Provisioning installs a certificate from the Certificate Manager - SaaS inventory on the system. When a certificate is renewed, its installation returns to New, and the next provisioning run installs the renewed certificate in place of the old one. To learn more, see Discover certificates on machines and Provision certificates to machines.

Some machine types run on a VSatellite in your network, so they can reach systems that Certificate Manager - SaaS can't reach from the cloud. When you create one of these machines, you choose the VSatellite to use. If you choose the primary VSatellite of a high availability group, Certificate Manager - SaaS can run the machine's operations on any healthy VSatellite in the group. Other machine types run in the cloud and need no VSatellite. A few connectors offer both, as two machine types, one of them marked (VSatellite).

Who can create machines¶

System Administrators and PKI Administrators can create machines for any team. Resource Owners can create machines only for a team they own or belong to, so a Resource Owner who isn't on any team must join or create a team first. Guests can't create machines.

Machine types¶

Machine types marked (Preview) are available in Preview and aren't yet generally available (GA). Their functionality and behavior can change before GA.