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What IKE and IPsec lifetimes are recommended with ONTAP

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Applies to

  • ONTAP 9.8 and later

Answer

  • Use an IPsec Security Association (SA) lifetime of 8 hours.
  • Use an Internet Key Exchange (IKE) SA lifetime of 24 hours.
  • In large environments with many IPsec Security Associations (SAs), short rekey times add load to the ONTAP process responsible for IPsec administrative work. This can:
    • Slow down IKE operations
    • Delay connection processing on failover
  • The specific configuration to set SA lifetimes depends on the client software in use.
  • After adjusting the lifetime values, restart the IKE daemon or reconnect the IPsec tunnel to apply the change.

Additional Information

  • If rekeying based on bytes, either select 0 to allow ONTAP to rekey based on its timers or select a sufficient amount of bytes based on the workload to avoid frequent rekeying.
  • Configuration examples
  • strongSwan (ipsec.conf)
    • In the relevant `conn` block, set:
      ikelifetime=24h
      lifetime=8h
  • strongSwan (swanctl.conf)
    • Set rekey_time on the IKE connection and on the child SA:
      connections {
          <name> {
              rekey_time = 24h
              children {
                  <name> {
                      rekey_time = 8h
                  }
              }
          }
      }
  • Libreswan
    • In the relevant connection definition in `/etc/ipsec.conf` or a file under `/etc/ipsec.d/`:
      ikelifetime=24h
      lifetime=8h
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