Clients are applications, or application servers that connect to Luna SA to use its cryptographic capabilities.
Examples of possible clients are:
All these applications require the storage of sensitive cryptographic data or can benefit from the increased security and cryptographic performance offered by Luna SA.
The HSM must be initialized, and then HSM partitions must be created, as described in "Configuration - Set up Luna SA and Clients".
Each Client is registered and assigned to a specific HSM Partition. Clients communicate with HSM Partitions on Luna SA through Network Trust Links and authenticate to Luna SA with a digital certificate and unique HSM Partition Password.
A password authenticated partition is ready to accept instructions from a registered client as soon as the partition is created. The client application simply provides the password (text string).
For a PED-authenticated HSM partition to be accessible to clients, the partition is activated (and, optionally) auto-activated), which caches the partition administrative credentials (black PED Key), and then the connecting client application provides the challenge password (text string).
See "Access a Partition from a Client" and "Accessing the HSM from your Application".