What are the functions of the Fabric CA Server and Fabric CA Client

Question

Hey. I am learning Hyperledger Fabric and I have some doubt with understand a concept. I want to know what are the Roles of the Fabric CA Server and Fabric CA Client? What are the differences between both? TIA

Answer 1

You need to setup the Fabric CA server to host one or more Certification Authorities (Fabric CA) for your Fabric Network (based on the MSPs What is the difference between MSP and Fabric CA?) using the following Command Line Options:

http://hyperledger-fabric-ca.readthedocs.io/en/latest/servercli.html

 The fabric-ca-client is just a nice wrapper to the ugly REST calls. It is just the component that provides an interface to the server component. However, you can skip using the fabric-ca-client and use the REST API of the Fabric Server and do all the functionalities mentioned above.

You can explore the functionalities of the Fabric CA client using either one of the following:

1. REST API 
2. http://hyperledger-fabric-ca.readthedocs.io/en/latest/clientcli.html
3. Fabric CA SDK Clients (Node, Java, etc) for the language you are developing your app in.

FYI, Fabric CA provides features such as:

1. Registration of identities with roles like peer or connects to an existing LDAP as the user registry to fetch identities of the mentioned roles
2. Issuance of Enrollment Certificates for signing and identifying
3. Issuance of Transaction Certificates 
4. Providing both anonymity and unlinkability when transacting on a Hyperledger Fabric blockchain
5. Certificate renewal  and revocation

Comments

Suppose there are many servers in a cluster. Then how will they store data of identities?

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All the servers in a cluster use the same database to store the information and track the identities and certificates.

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Hi. I am trying to run the server and client on my system. But before starting the system, I want to make some changes to the server. But when I start the server, I can not make the changes later. So how to handle this situation?

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Instead of directly starting the server, just initialize it first. After initializing, you'll find the default configuration files. Make the necessary changes to it and then start the server. To initialize the server, you can run this command:

$ fabric-ca-server init -b admin:adminpw

Answer 2

The Hyperledger Fabric CA is a Certificate Authority (CA) for Hyperledger Fabric.

It provides features such as:

• registration of identities, or connects to LDAP as the user registry
• issuance of Enrollment Certificates (ECerts)
• certificate renewal and revocation

Source: https://hyperledger-fabric-ca.readthedocs.io/en/release-1.4/users-guide.html

Comments

There's no information about Server or Client

Answer 3

The fabric Server is the system that runs the fabric CA. And one way to interact with the Server is by using a fabric CA Client

Comments

What are the other ways to interact with the Server?

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Hey @Tina, the other way is by using the Fabric SDK. What should be used depends on the application. In some cases, it is better and easy to use a Fabric Client and in some it's easy to use the SDK.

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Hi Sir, How can I install this?

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Hi @Denim. You can install both server and client using the below command:

$ go get -u github.com/hyperledger/fabric-ca/cmd/...