SSL Certificate and Private Key

[Frogguy]

I have a question regarding the generation of the Private Key in Plesk when creating a CSR. (Certificate Signing Request)

Are all the Private Keys unique to the Domain you are creating them in or is there just one Private Key (the Server Key) used for the CRS and resulting Certificates

I find myself in an odd situation where one of my clients has asked me to generate a CSR on their behalf however they wish to have the CRS signed at their CA and then install the Certificate on their in-house server (Apache – no Plesk)

All that I have read seems to indicate that this is possible, however they will require the Private Key that the CRS was generated with.
I do not want to give out a (Server Key) that is used on all the other certificates I have on the server that might cause the need to revoke all the certificates on the Plesk server.

Also, as we do not have to issue the pass phrase each time the server is restarted, are they stored unencypted? (.pem)


Thanks

 

[faris]

No, it OK. Each key is unique.

Using Plesk to generate the CSR and key is fine will work fine with a non-plesk Apache.

Plesk's UI is basically just a friendly interface to the command line key generation tools.

I've done this a few times personally, so I know it works.

Of course all this depends on them knowing how to configure their Apache installation/where to put the generated key and resulting cert (and possibly CA cert) in order to make it all work.

Faris.

 

[Frogguy]

Thanks Faris.