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I rent a managed dedicated server from a hosting company. A year ago, they added SSL support to one of my domains at my request.

Last night, however, the certificate expired:

yourdomain uses an invalid security certificate.

The certificate expired on April 9, 2016 at 03:33. The current time is April 9, 2016 at 10:00.

Error code: SEC_ERROR_EXPIRED_CERTIFICATE

I have little trust for this particular hosting company as they have shown a pattern of making errors, this being the latest example.

I created a ticket with their support and they are telling that:

  • They have "requested the certificate be re-issued using the same private key" (at Geotrust.)
  • That "this may take up to 12 hours to appear"

My questions are:

  1. What are the steps involved in renewing a certificate? Is it simply a) Get new certificate from certificate provider b) Install new certificate on server?
  2. How long does it usually take?

To clarify: my host is usually very slow in getting things done. I want to be able to check on this certificate renewal and ensure it is performed in a timely fashion because hundreds of paying customers are currently unable to access the site.

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    Less than a minute. Perhaps you should jump on the Let's Encrypt bandwagon :) Apr 9, 2016 at 8:35
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    Why are you not acquiring the certificate directly from a CA?
    – kasperd
    Apr 9, 2016 at 14:02
  • @kasperd I could have. Ordering it from the hosting company just seemed to make more sense since they would be the ones installing it (managed dedicated server.) Apr 9, 2016 at 14:10

2 Answers 2

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If your certificate is expired, you have to renew it and the process of renewing SSL will be the same as you initially purchase the certificate. Now, the time factor depends upon the type of validation certificate that you go with. For example, domain validation certificate takes few minutes in issuance while business validation certificate takes up to 2 business days and extended validation (EV) certificate takes up to 7 business days for verification and issuance.

The process of renewal includes generate the CSR, get a new certificate and finally install the certificate on your desired server.

As you stated that, your hosting provider is not up to the mark you can also renew the certificate directly from CA or its authorized re-seller. Generally, re-sellers would cost less compare to direct CA and offers huge discount as well.

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This will depend, especially for the worst-case, on the type of certificate in combination with how often the CA re-validates the certificate subject information for renewals.

First of all, if the CA has current enough validated information they may just sign the new certificate immediately.

If it's a domain-validated certificate (where the CA only validates that the certificate is issued to someone in control of the domain name, and where the cert doesn't really contain any information beyond the hostname it is valid for), the CA's part of this bare-minimum (re-)validation is typically automated and quick.

However, if it's a certificate that includes information about who the subject actually is, where the EV (Extended Validation) type of cert is the extreme case, the (re-)validation of subject information and ensuring that the claimed subject is actually the requester tends to involve a number of manual and often time-consuming steps. (In that case 12h is quite possibly too short.)

Once the CA has signed the certificate it's just a matter of configuring your web server to use the new certificate (along with any relevant intermediate certificates), which is just a quick routine thing to do.

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  • Their support is telling me that they're waiting for the new certificate but that it will be taken into account automatically (i.e.: they won't have to install it on the server.) Is it total nonsense or is it actually possible? Apr 9, 2016 at 12:00
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    @FabienSnauwaert It has to be "installed" on the TLS endpoint, whether that is directly on the server or for instance on a load balancer in front of it. An interpretation that would make sense is if they just mean that they have automated the setup process and that this won't take any additional time once they get the certificate. Apr 9, 2016 at 13:12

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