Grid Certificates

SWITCH offers the following grid certificates:

  • SWITCHpki QuoVadis Grid Certificates: Grid server certificates and long lived grid user certificates, which have both a duration of a year. These certificates are issued by the QuoVadis Grid ICA, which is accredidate by EuGridPMA. Grid server certificates are needed by a tipical machine in a grid environment using middlewares such as gLite or NorduGrid.

    Long lived grid user certificates are instead needed by those users who need to use grid resources as well as access certain grid portals (e.g. the GOCDB in the WLCG collaboration) by uploading their grid certificate into the browser.

  • SWITCHslcs: Short-lived user certificates, which have a duration of 11 days only. The SLCS service (SLCS = short lived certificate service) relies on a CA operated by SWITCH and accredited by EUGridPMA, which is dedicated to issuing short-lived certificates. More information about the service can be found here. Note:Grid users are recommended to use slcs certificates in a grid environment whenever possible instead of long lived ones.

    • Certificate Usage Certificate Type Comment
    Recommended for grid users who only run grid jobs

    Short-lived User Certificate (SLCS)

    		 Issued automatically through AAI login. Validity: 11 days
    Recommended for expert grid users who also need to import their certificate into the browser

    Long-lived User Certificate

    		 Only available to targeted user groups. Validity: 1 year
    For servers running grid services

    Server Certificate

    		 Validity: one year

    Contact the SWITCH Grid Team

    Please refer all questions regarding the usage of (already issued) X.509 grid certificates to grid@switch.ch

    Any questions/problems related to the issuance of a certificate, must be addressed instead to pki@switch.ch