SSL certificate for MOSS public site?

Question

I have a sharepoint web application accessible online (public IP) thru windows auth on port 81 and extended to port 80 and is accessible anonymously. now i need to secure the portal using SSL. https will be enforced for only one of the sites in the site collection while the rest are http only

I have two questions:

1. How to apply the certificate? I suppose it should be applied only to IIS as the application is already accessible anonymously on port 80 and a login form is configured. May be i need to add an AAM for the https version of the external urls?

2. The application has like 15 alternate access mappings defined in the internet and extranet zones. the external URLs in the two zones are www.mydomain.com.jo (for internet) and www.domain2.net.jo (for extranet). The internal URLs are so many. In all cases, all the internal and external urls resolve to the same public IP .. my question; how many certificates shall I buy? I know that an IIS website takes only one certificate ... I asked a colleague and he suggested one certificate with one primary domain name (www.mydomain.com.jo) and a secondary domain (www.domain2.net.sa). Is this all i need

thanks for any help

Answer 1

Certificates can only be applied at the WebApp level in IIS, and you can only assign one certificate per application.

Unless you are using a reverse proxy that will change the URL's you will need a cert that covers each URL you will be accessing with SSL enabled.

Because your URL's utilize different domain names, you can not take advantage of a wildcard cert, but you can load up a cert with subject alternate names. You can get a cert assigned to your primary domain, and then list out all your other URL's as the alternative names, this includes all external and internal names. The disadvantage is that if you miss or want to add a url later, you need a new certificate.