Single Site w/ shared SSL Certs on Azure

Question

We would like to setup an application on Windows Azure at abc.cloudapp.net which would have a CNAME record for www.mydomain.com pointing to it and then allow clients to do the same. Our application would then look at the requested URL and then pull out relevant data based on the requested domain (abc.theirdomain.com or www.theirotherdomain.com).

Our initial tests show that this should work, however the problem lies in that we need the site to be secure. So we'd like clients to be able to setup shared SSL certs with us that we would upload to our Azure subscription that then allowed them to create a CNAME record (abc.theirdomain.com or www.theirotherdomain.com) that points to either www.mydomain.com or abc.cloudapp.net.

Is this possible?

Edit: I'm not sure if this is the same question as Azure web role - Multiple ssl certs pointing to a single endpoint.

score 1 · Answer 1 · edited May 23 '17 at 12:29

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The problem with a multi-domain certificate is that it is more expensive than a "normal" certificate and that every time you add a new domain, you will have to deploy a new package with the updated certificate.

On the other hand, you could have multiple SSL certificates (one for each domain) and then the answer you seek is here Azure web role - Multiple ssl certs pointing to a single endpoint.

edited May 23 '17 at 12:29

Community

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answered Apr 04 '13 at 12:02

Vitor Ciaramella

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You seem to be confusing wildcard certs with certs with multiple SANs ("multi-domain certs"). A wildcard cert (`*.example.com`) will not have to be re-deployed if you add a new sub-site (e.g. `abc005.example.com`) later on, because the pattern still matches. The problem here is that a wildcard certificate wouldn't work at all, since the domain names are completely different. – Bruno Apr 04 '13 at 12:47

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Sep 07 '11 at 15:14

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We've used a multi-domain certificate in this situation - see http://www.comodo.com/business-security/digital-certificates/multi-domain-ssl.php for details. This will work for up to 100 different top-level domains.

answered Sep 07 '11 at 15:14

Jeremy McGee

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Have you seen this work on Azure? Or see any reason why it wouldn't I guess? – jaryd Sep 07 '11 at 16:31
Yes, I'm using this kind of certificate in Azure without problems. – Jeremy McGee Sep 08 '11 at 08:49
Is there anything special you need to do in Azure to get this to work? Or is it the same as using a "normal" cert? – ryancrawcour Jul 05 '12 at 05:25
Same as a regular certificate. – Jeremy McGee Jul 05 '12 at 10:29

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Sep 07 '11 at 14:57

No, I don't think your setup would be possible with a single SSL cert. In general, SSL certs are tied to the hostname (e.g. foo.domain.com and foo.domain2.com need different certs). However, you can purchase a wildcard SSL cert that will help if you use the same root domain, but different subdomains (e.g. foo.domain.com and foo2.domain.com can share a wildcard cert).

So, in your case, since you are allowing different root domains, then you need a different SSL cert for each. If instead you choose to allow different sub-domains on same root domain, you can get away with the wildcard cert.

Single Site w/ shared SSL Certs on Azure

3 Answers3