How Do I Update My Existing SSL Certificate
Updating your existing SSL Certificate is a quick and simple process. Whether your SSL Certificate is expiring or you are simply needing to change to a new SSL Certificate, you can follow these instructions to get your SSL updated and installed quickly.
Contents |
Getting Started
In order to update or renew your SSL Certificate, you will need your CSR. If you don't have your CSR saved, please contact support to retrieve it. You can contact our Fanatical Support through a ticket, live chat or via phone and we can assist you with obtaining this information.
Renewing Your Certificate
Next, you will need to update/renew your SSL Certificate. SSL Certificates are available from a number of third party sources. Some recommended sellers are RapidSSL, Geotrust, and Verisign. Click here for a more complete list of supported certificates.
Follow your vendor's SSL Certificate renewal process; in particular you may require the following details:
- Server type: Apache 2
- SSL type: OpenSSL
- CSR
Once you have completed your certificate renewal, you're ready to install the new certificate!
Installing the Certificate
In order to install your new SSL certificate, you will need the following information (all of these will be supplied by the SSL vendor you chose):
- Certificate
- Private Key
- Intermediate Certificate (Typically supplied in a separate file from the vendor)
Once you have the above information, you can install your new certificate by clicking on the Security tab of your site, then click on the Edit Certificate link:
On the next screen, you will see three fields for Certificate, Private Key, and Intermediate Certificate; simply replace the current information with your updated info and hit save.
DNS Update
Because you are updating an existing SSL certificate, you will not need to wait for propagation as you would when installing a new SSL Certificate.
What To Watch For
- Currently The Rackspace Cloud does not support wildcard certificates--such as *.domain.com or *.example.com. , or self signed certificates.
- Removing the SSL certificate from your site will change its IP address, which can require a DNS change.
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2 Comments
I recently updated the SSL
The KB article here does not clearly state that, unless the update is performed by the Helpdesk through a Support Ticket, the IP address associated with the website will change. Whilst this has a negligible impact on sites where Rackspace also manage the NameServer, for some clients, who manage their domains separately, this is another step in the process which is not clear until AFTER it is too late.
The process, as it stands, where I need to delete the existing SSL certificate before uploading the new one, is clunky and un-necessary. Why not have the ability to replace the existing certifiate? No downtime, one action, all done!
After contacting the Live Chat helpdesk rep, he informed me of the above side-effect, and, whilst very helpful within the limits of what he could do (which was not much), he was unable to override the automatic IP address allocation and recover the previous IP address (which would have prevented the downtime which the site now experiences whilst waiting for the nameserver manager to update the IP address, managed in a third party system, manually).
Of course, now I know to use a Support Ticket in the future to avoid these issues, but it would be nice if 1) the issues were not there to begin with, 2) the KB article clearly stated the cautions and options available, 3) the helpdesk were able to resolve these issues within your system.
Re: SSL and IP addresses
I'll try to pass along the suggestion to improve the process as well, but you're most likely to have it seen by the right people if you post it to our feature request forum:
http://feedback.rackspacecloud.com/forums/71021-product-feedback
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