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Administration & Maintenance - Backup & Restore

Why is Backup optional?

In general, a Luna HSM or HSM Partition is capable of being backed up to a Luna Backup Token. The backup capability is considered a good and desirable and necessary thing for keys that carry a high cost to replace, such as Certificate Authority root keys and root certificates.

However, Backup tokens are optional equipment for Luna SA. There are at least three reasons for this:

1. Some Customers don't care. They may be using (for example) SSL within a controlled boundary like a corporation, where it is not a problem to simply tell all employees to be prepared to trust a new certificate, in the event that the previous one is lost or compromised. In fact it might be company policy to periodically jettison old certificates and distribute fresh ones.
   
   Other customers might be using software that manages lost profiles, making it straightforward to resume work with a new key or cert. The certificate authority that issued the certificates would need backup, but the individual customers of that certificate authority would not.
   
   In summary, it might not be worthwhile to backup keys that are low-cost (from an implementation point of view) to replace. Keys that carry a high cost to replace should be backed up.
2. SIM (Secure Identity Management or Multi-Million Keys) does not co-exist with standard Luna cloning function. The SIM Master Secret Key on the HSM can be backed up, but HSM Partitions are not used in the SIM configuration, so there are no contents to backup.
3. Some countries do not permit copying of private keys. If you are subject to such laws, and wish to store encrypted material for later retrieval (perhaps archives of highly sensitive files), then you would use symmetric keys, rather than a private/public keypair, for safe and legal backup.

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