SharePoint 2010 Search doesn't work when SSL client certificates required for WebApp

Question

Our configuration:

• SharePoint 2010 Enterprise SP1 (WFE box + SQL box )
• HTTPS enabled web application (with client certificates required)
• self signed client certificates
• there is an account that is granted FullRead permission on the web application
• a client certificate is issued for this account
• the certificate is placed in (local computer)/personal certificate storage (on WFE)
• the root certificate is in the (local computer)/Trusted certification authorites storage (on WFE)
• a crawling rule is created which has this client certificate specified

Allways get Error from SharePoint site: HttpStatusCode Unauthorized The request failed with HTTP status 401: Unauthorized in corresponding content source log.

If I remove client certificates requirement on IIS, crawling works fine under the same account

How to configure SharePoint 2010 Search to work with client certificates?

Answer 1

Try extending the web application as an http only site (preferably on a different port) and have search index that instead. As long as both the http and https urls appear in Alternate Access Mappings, Search will know that the http and https sites point to the same data and will properly format the URLs it finds. The http-only URL should ideally only be visible within the SharePoint Farm itself and this can be done via DNS, Firewall or even HOSTS modifications.