By Emily Schroeder, Microsoft Corporation

Technical contributor: Dean Halstead

Introduction

Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) is recommended for encrypting and helping secure the communication between your client and server computers. This paper describes how to enable SSL on a Microsoft Office SharePoint Portal Server 2003 installation by creating, installing, and validating a digital server certificate and by installing the certificate across your network load-balanced front-end Web servers.

The steps in this paper assume the following:

• You have installed SharePoint Portal Server and created a portal site.
• The portal site is functioning correctly.
• Network load balancing is functioning correctly.
• Updates and search are functioning correctly.
• You are using Microsoft Certificate Services. The default certificate templates or types of certificates are available, depending on whether you have Microsoft Certificate Services installed on a computer running Microsoft Windows 2000 Server or Microsoft Windows Server 2003, respectively. Specifically, the client authentication certificate and the server authentication certificate are available. If they are not available, contact your certificate server administrator for the type of certificate to use for client or server authentication certificates.
• You are enabling SSL on Default Web Site.

   Important   If you are enabling SSL on another virtual server, substitute the name of that virtual server for Default Web Site in the instructions.

The process for enabling SSL for SharePoint Portal Server is as follows:

1. Ensure that you can access the home page of the portal site.
2. Create a server certificate by using the certificate wizard.
3. Request a server certificate from the certificate server.
4. Install the server certificate on your primary front-end Web server.
5. Verify that the certificate is valid.
6. Test the home page of the portal site.
7. Require SSL. This step is optional.
8. Test the home page of the portal site.
9. Export the server certificate for use on the primary front-end Web server.
10. Install the server certificate on the remaining network load-balanced front-end Web servers.
11. Test the home page of the portal site.
12. Test SSL from the index management server.
13. Modify settings to update search.
14. Configure import settings for user profiles to use SSL via secure Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP). This step is optional.

The following sections explain each step in this process.

In addition, the "Troubleshooting" section at the end of this paper includes information to assist you in diagnosing any configuration problems.