FAQs: Support and maintenance
Read to get answers for support and maintenance related questions about IBM Cloud® Hyper Protect Crypto Services.
How is routine maintenance performed on Hyper Protect Crypto Services?
If one available zone that contains your provisioned service instance goes down, Hyper Protect Crypto Services has automatic in-region data failover in place if you have 2 or 3 crypto units provisioned. IBM also performs cross-region backup for your key resources. Your data is automatically backed up in another supported region daily. If a regional disaster that affects all available zones occurs, you need to open a support ticket so that IBM can restore your data in another supported IBM Cloud regions from the backup. And then, you need to manually load your master key to your new service instance. For more information, see Restoring your data from another region.
How do I get support for Hyper Protect Crypto Services?
If you have technical questions about Hyper Protect Crypto Services, post your question on Stack Overflow and tag your question with
ibm-cloud and hyper-protect-crypto.
For more information about opening an IBM support ticket, or about support levels and ticket severities, see Using the Support Center.
After the service initialization is done, are there any best practices for managing smart cards or key part files?
It is your responsibility to secure assets used to initialize the Hyper Protect Crypto Services instance:
- Store smart cards, the associated PINs, and the smart card readers in secure vaults to prevent unauthorized access.
- Secure key part files in the directory associated with CLOUDTKEFILES in an approved file storage vault.
Make sure you follow these best practice to maintain your secure assets:
- Store the PINS in an approved password vault in the customer environment.
- Prepare a transition plan for administrators to hand over all crypto assets as they move over to different roles.
- Update the Disaster Recovery plans to verify crypto assets such as smart cards, PINs, smart card readers.
You can find more detailed instructions by following these links: