Ssl – How to best set up SSL for use with multiple Amazon EC2 Server instances behind a load balancer

amazon ec2sslssl-certificate

So, I'm running three EC2 instances behind an AWS load balancer. I want to purchase an SSL certificate to use with these machines. Should I just purchase the certificate for the load balancer's public IP address and install the certificate on each machine? Will this work?

Best Answer

AWS Elastic Load Balancer supports SSL termination at the load balancer. This means you can install your SSL certificate on the load balancer itself. The load balancer will then talk unencrypted HTTP between the load balancer and your EC2 instance.

This way you only have to install the certificate on the ELB instead of every machine. Have your Apache/Nginx/Lighttpd/whatever use plain HTTP, not SSL. Let the load balancer handle all of the SSL.