The Cost of SSL – Selecting Affordable Certificates

SSL server certificates are mandatory for finance, e-commerce, and any site that wishes to protect data in transit. Tied to a fully qualified domain name, they also provide a level of non-repudiation. SSL in its more modern incarnation, transport layer security (TLS), is a very effective layer of security.

A quick Google search for “web [...]

StartSSL (StartCom) Certificates on the Citrix NetScaler

For a very low cost, it’s easy to use StartSSL (Startcom) certificates on the Citrix NetScaler product line. This is includes the free NetScaler VPX Express edition. A lot of problems I see with others configuring the NetScaler is related to either self-signed certificates or the use of intermediate (e.g., chained) certificates.

Using a Startcom [...]

Replacing vCenter 4.1 SSL Certificate with Active Directory Issued One

This is an update post to reflect the differences in vCenter 4.1 vs the older vCenter 25 install. The older post can be found here.

Certain third party products such as XenDesktop respect the expiration date on the vCenter SSL certificate. The vSphere Client doesn’t mind so much, nor it appears do the vSphere (ESX/ESXi [...]

Replacing vCenter 2.5 Self-Signed Certificate with Active Directory Issued One

Certain third party products such as XenDesktop respect the expiration date on the vCenter SSL certificate. The vSphere Client doesn’t mind so much, nor it appears does the ESX hosts, but when your VDIs suddenly can’t be reached, it’s a bad thing.

By default, vCenter will create a self-signed certificate with just the host name. [...]

Snow Leopard Certificate Sillyness

I love OS X and every iteration has gotten better and better. But every once in a while tasks that should be simple–aren’t. Take the case of trying to add a S/MIME certificate to the Keychain.

In the past, simply double-clicking on the .p12 file would prompt for the passphrase and import it into the [...]