Installing a wildcard certificate on multiple servers.

StaceyIsLearni said 2 years, 4 months ago:

I am responsible for installing (but not purchasing) certificates on the servers in our organization but I have not worked with wildcard certificates before. As I understand the current plan at the College we will purchase a wildcard certificate for our organization and install the certificate on multiple servers in our organization.

For example Say we have 10 sites on 5 different servers, all of which we own and manage and all will have the same domain name xxx.edu with the individual sites having names like site1.xxx.edu site2.xxx.edu.

Would the process be to obtain the wildcard certificate for one website and then copy that same certificate to the other 4 servers and install the same certificate on those servers?

JasonP said 2 years, 4 months ago:

@StaceyIsLearni,

When requesting the certificate, you will request *.xxx.edu, which will cover the domain, and any subdomain.

If you want to install the certificate on multiple servers, export the private key from the original server and import it on the additional servers you want to secure. Then, install the certificate on the new servers.

Hope this helps,

Jason

StaceyIsLearni said 2 years, 4 months ago:

Just to check my understanding of what happens when a certificate is ordered. When I generate the certificate request on the first server a private and public key is created and the public key along with information related to the name of the site, college and such goes into the certificate request I then give that file to the person responsible for ordering the certificate. The person ordering a certificate then obtains the signed certificate from GO Daddy and when I install the certificate on the site any request from the users browser about how trust worthy the site is can be referred to from the Go Daddy related information in the Certificate I installed.

Does that sound about right?

JasonP said 2 years, 3 months ago:

@StaceyIsLearni,

Once the certificate is issued, you will install it on the web server itself, not the site. Any secured areas will need to be redirected to HTTPS once the cert is on the server. Then, yes, the browser can view and validate the certificate.

Jason

smile100h said 2 years, 2 months ago:

I tried to request an SSL certificate with wildcard capability. I followed GoDaddy’s help to create a mydomainname.csr and pasted CSR into the request area. However, the system gave me the following error.

The name entered in the CN(Common Name) field of the CSR MUST be the fully-qualified domain name for the Web site you will be using the certificate for (e.g., “www.domainnamegoeshere.com”), or a valid Intranet domain name. Do not include the “http://” or “https://” prefixes in your common name. The common name cannot include spaces. Do NOT enter your personal name in this field.

I am sure I put “*.mydomainname.com” in the CN field. How come it won’t take it. Please help! Thanks!

Stephen

smile100h said 2 years, 2 months ago:

When requesting a wildcard certificate, I got the following error.

The name entered in the CN(Common Name) field of the CSR MUST be the fully-qualified domain name for the Web site you will be using the certificate for (e.g., “www.domainnamegoeshere.com”), or a valid Intranet domain name. Do not include the “http://” or “https://” prefixes in your common name. The common name cannot include spaces. Do NOT enter your personal name in this field.

I am sure I put “*.mydomainname.com” in the CN field. How come the system won’t take it. Please help!

smile100h said 2 years, 2 months ago:

Self resolved …..

My Standard SSL was for single domain only. I had asked for refund and purchased a different product.

JasonP said 2 years, 2 months ago:

@smile100h,

Glad to hear you got it resolved. Thanks for posting on the Community.

Jason

fpelayo said 2 years, 2 months ago:

Hi. Curious: does exporting wildcards work between different *types* of servers? (e.g. buy it for Apache, export to IIS/Java/etc.)

staceyh said 2 years, 2 months ago:

@fpelayo Yes, you can install the certificate between multiple server types as well. The instructions for this would be the same as @JasonP’s earlier in the thread.

~Stacey