FIPS mode in Azure Government

[cl625410]

Has anyone been successful in converting their VM-series appliances running in Azure Government to FIPS-CC mode? The SSH keys I created and allowed for FW management prior to the conversion were wiped out and resetting the keys via the Azure portal doesn't work (although the agent is running). I cannot get into the GUI either since admin is not a supported username in Azure.

Second question, does anyone have a ARM template that successfully installs a SSH public key on a newly provisioned firewall? I can't seem to find the proper syntax.

Any help would be greatly appreciated, thank you in advance!

[StevenRogers]

We use FIPS-CC mode in the Azure Government Cloud, using this article to set it. Basically:

1. SSH into the FW (using your username and ssh key file)
2. Enter the commands to put the firewall into maintenance mode (debug system maintenance-mode) - this will cause a reboot
3. SSH into the FW again, and set the FW to FIPS-CC mode using the article linked above, then reboot the firewall again
4. Once the firewall is back and in FIPS-CC mode, it should still allow you to SSH in using the same credentials. We then make an admin user so that we can log into the GUI for the firewall

As to your second question, we don't use an ARM template, but use Terraform instead, specifically the "tls" provider (hashicorp/tls | Terraform Registry), which lets you make a private/public key pair, which we then import into Azure Key Vault.

Hope that all helps!