You may want to create a self-signed SSL certificate for a Cloud Platform application in one of the following cases:

• You want to test your application with SSL before purchasing the final certificate
• You want to test a new subdomain on an application with a SSL certificate that doesn’t cover the new subdomain
• Your application requires IPv6 but not SSL

Creating SSL certificates

To create a self-signed SSL certificate, you will need both a root certificate and a site certificate.

Create a root certificate

To create a root certificate:

• Create a private key for your root certificate. Connect to your environment with SSH

• To ensure that you are in a writable directory (such as /mnt/tmp/), use a command similar to the following:

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  openssl genpkey -algorithm RSA -out ca.key.pem -pkeyopt rsa_keygen_bits:2048

• Next, enter a command similar to the following example to self-sign the certificate:

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  openssl req -new -x509 -key ca.key.pem -out ca.cert.pem -days 365 -sha256

• The following result (or something similar to it) will be displayed. Enter the values that are appropriate to your site, system, and location.

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  You are about to be asked to enter information that will be
  incorporated into your certificate request.
  What you are about to enter is what is called a Distinguished Name or a
  DN.
  There are quite a few fields but you can leave some blank
  For some fields there will be a default value,
  If you enter '.', the field will be left blank.
  -----
  Country Name (2 letter code) [AU]:US
  State or Province Name (full name) [Some-State]:Oregon
  Locality Name (eg, city) []:Portland
  Organization Name (eg, company) [Internet Widgits Pty Ltd]: My Name (Root CA)
  Organizational Unit Name (eg, section) []:
  Common Name (e.g. server FQDN or YOUR name) []:www.mysite.com
  Email Address []:[email protected]

The root certificate is created in the same directory, with the name ca.cert.pem; its key is created with the name ca.key.pem.

Create the site certificate

Next, use the following procedure to create the site certificate.

• Create the private key with the following command:

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  openssl genpkey -algorithm RSA -out site-key.pem -pkeyopt rsa_keygen_bits:2048

• Use the following command to generate the certificate signing request (CSR):

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  openssl req -new -key site-key.pem -out site-csr.csr -sha256

• You will be presented with similar text as when you created the root certificate. Use the same values as you did for the root certificate except for the Organization Name*. For the Organization Name, use a different value, such as My Name (Site CA).

  The following questions will also be displayed:

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  Please enter the following 'extra' attributes
  to be sent with your certificate request
  A challenge password []:
  An optional company name []:

  Note

  Skip A challenge password by pressing the Enter key.

• Enter a command similar to this example this to sign the CSR with the root key and output in PEM format with the .pem extension:

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  openssl x509 -req -in site-csr.csr -CA ca.cert.pem -CAkey ca.key.pem -CAcreateserial -out site-crt.pem -days 365 -sha256

The site certificate CSR is created in the same directory, with the name site-csr.csr; the site certificate key is created with the name site-crt.pem, and its key is created with the name site-key.pem.

Install your certificates

Next, install the root certificate and site certificate, as described in Installing an SSL certificate not based on an Acquia-generated CSR, and then complete the appropriate steps for your application:

• If your application requires IPv6, select Install legacy SSL certificate while installing the certificate, and review Legacy/ELB certificates for information about configuring your DNS settings.
• If your application doesn’t require IPv6, use the Standard installation method outlined in Standard certificates.

Next step

A code change is required to route traffic to https to leverage your new SSL certificate. For more information, see Redirecting all HTTP traffic to HTTPS.

Creating a self-signed SSL certificate