AWS Server Certificate Renewal and Management Methods

Best Approach for Renewing and Managing AWS Server Certificates

Prev Question Next Question

Question

You work in a DevOps team, and your team maintains several applications deployed in AWS.

At the moment, there are dozens of server certificates stored in IAM.

These certificates are used for different purposes and have different expiry date.

You have to renew the certificates before they expire.

Otherwise, the services will be impacted.

You want to use another approach to renew and manage these certificates.

Which method is the best?

Answers

Explanations

Click on the arrows to vote for the correct answer

A. B. C. D.

Correct Answer - B.

Check https://docs.aws.amazon.com/IAM/latest/UserGuide/id_credentials_server-certs.html on how to manage server certificates in IAM and ACM.

Option A is incorrect: Because for the imported server certificates in IAM, there is no IAM console to manage them.

This is one major disadvantage of managing certificates in IAM.

Option B is CORRECT: Because ACM is a preferred solution.

Certificates requested by ACM are free and automatically renew.

Option C is incorrect: Because you cannot migrate the certificates from IAM to ACM directly.

There is no such console to do that.

For ACM, you can import third-party certificates to the service.

Option D is incorrect: Because ACM cannot automatically renew imported third-party certificates.

You are responsible for monitoring the expiration date.Please check the reference in.

https://docs.aws.amazon.com/IAM/latest/UserGuide/id_credentials_server-certs.html

Option B is the best method to renew and manage server certificates in AWS. Provisioning and managing server certificates in AWS Certificate Manager (ACM) is a recommended approach to secure your application's communication with HTTPS. AWS Certificate Manager takes care of the renewal process of the certificates for you automatically.

ACM is a service that lets you provision, manage, and deploy Secure Sockets Layer/Transport Layer Security (SSL/TLS) certificates for use with AWS services and your internal connected resources. ACM is integrated with several AWS services such as Elastic Load Balancing, CloudFront, Elastic Beanstalk, and API Gateway.

With ACM, you don't need to worry about renewing your SSL/TLS certificates manually or tracking the expiration dates of your certificates. ACM will automatically renew the certificates before they expire, and it will replace the expired certificates with new ones.

Option A is not recommended since IAM is not designed to manage SSL/TLS certificates. It is a best practice to use a service that is specifically designed to manage certificates like AWS Certificate Manager.

Option C is a possible solution, but it requires manual effort to migrate the certificates from IAM to ACM. Also, you would still need to create a renewal strategy manually in ACM to ensure that the certificates are renewed before they expire.

Option D is not the best method since importing all third-party certificates into ACM is not always feasible. Additionally, it is not recommended to manage third-party certificates using a service that is specifically designed for managing certificates that are issued by AWS.

In summary, the best method to renew and manage server certificates in AWS is to provision and manage them using AWS Certificate Manager.