Deploy a global self-managed certificate

This tutorial describes how to use Certificate Manager to deploy a self-managed certificate to a global external Application Load Balancer.

To deploy a self-managed certificate to a global external Application Load Balancer using Certificate Manager, create a certificate map and attach the map to the target proxy. To deploy a certificate to a regional external Application Load Balancer or to a regional internal Application Load Balancer, attach the certificates directly to the target proxy. For more information, see Deploy a regional self-managed certificate.

If you want to deploy the certificate to a classic Application Load Balancer, follow the steps of this tutorial. The procedure for deploying a certificate to a classic Application Load Balancer is the same as the procedure for deploying the certificate to a global external Application Load Balancer.

Objectives

This tutorial shows you how to complete the following tasks:

  • Upload a self-managed certificate to Certificate Manager.
  • Deploy the certificate to a global external Application Load Balancer using a target HTTPS proxy.

For more information about the certificate deployment process, see Deployment overview.

Before you begin

  1. In the Google Cloud console, on the project selector page, select or create a Google Cloud project.

    Go to project selector

  2. Make sure that you have the following roles to complete the tasks in this tutorial:

    • Certificate Manager Owner: Required to create and manage Certificate Manager resources.
    • Compute Load Balancer Admin or Compute Network Admin: Required to create and manage HTTPS target proxy.

    For more information, see the following:

Create the load balancer

Create the load balancer where you want to deploy the certificate. To create a global external Application Load Balancer, see Set up a global external Application Load Balancer with VM instance group backends.

The rest of this tutorial assumes that you have already configured the load balancer's backends, health check, backend service, and URL map. Note the name of the URL map because you need it later in this tutorial.

Upload a self-managed certificate to Certificate Manager

The following sections describe how to request and upload a self-managed certificate to Certificate Manager.

Request and validate a certificate

To request and validate a self-managed certificate, follow these steps:

  1. Use a trusted third-party certificate authority (CA) to issue the certificate along with its associated key.

  2. Verify that the certificate is properly chained and root-trusted.

  3. Prepare the following PEM-encoded files:

    • The certificate file (CRT)
    • The corresponding private key file (KEY)

To complete the previous tasks, see Create a private key and certificate.

Upload the certificate to Certificate Manager

To upload the certificate to Certificate Manager, run the following command:

gcloud certificate-manager certificates create CERTIFICATE_NAME \
    --certificate-file="CERTIFICATE_FILE" \
    --private-key-file="PRIVATE_KEY_FILE"

Replace the following:

  • CERTIFICATE_NAME: the unique name of the certificate
  • CERTIFICATE_FILE: the path and filename of the CRT certificate file
  • PRIVATE_KEY_FILE: the path and filename of the KEY private key file

Deploy the self-managed certificate to a load balancer

The following sections describe how to deploy the self-managed certificate that you uploaded to Certificate Manager to a load balancer.

Create a certificate map

Create a certificate map that references the certificate map entry associated with your certificate:

gcloud certificate-manager maps create CERTIFICATE_MAP_NAME

Replace CERTIFICATE_MAP_NAME with the name of the target certificate map.

Create a certificate map entry

Create a certificate map entry, and associate it with your self-managed certificate and certificate map:

gcloud certificate-manager maps entries create CERTIFICATE_MAP_ENTRY_NAME \
    --map="CERTIFICATE_MAP_NAME" \
    --certificates="CERTIFICATE_NAME" \
    --hostname="HOSTNAME"

Replace the following:

  • CERTIFICATE_MAP_ENTRY_NAME: a unique name of the certificate map entry
  • CERTIFICATE_MAP_NAME: the certificate map name that the certificate map entry is attached to
  • CERTIFICATE_NAME: the certificate name that you want to associate with the certificate map entry
  • HOSTNAME: the hostname that you want to associate with the certificate map entry

Verify that the certificate map entry is active

Before you attach the certificate map to the target proxy, run the following command to verify whether the certificate map entry is active:

gcloud certificate-manager maps entries describe CERTIFICATE_MAP_ENTRY_NAME \
    --map="CERTIFICATE_MAP_NAME"

Replace the following:

  • CERTIFICATE_MAP_ENTRY_NAME: a unique name of the certificate map entry
  • CERTIFICATE_MAP_NAME: the certificate map name that the certificate map entry is attached to

If the certificate map entry is active, the Google Cloud CLI returns output similar to the following:

createTime: '2021-09-06T10:01:56.229472109Z'
name: projects/my-project/locations/global/certificateMaps/myCertMap/certificateMapEntries/myCertMapEntry
state: ACTIVE
updateTime: '2021-09-06T10:01:58.277031787Z'

Create the HTTPS target proxy

To deploy the certificate to a global external Application Load Balancer, see Create a target proxy for global external Application Load Balancers.

Attach the certificate map to the target proxy

To attach the configured certificate map to the target proxy, follow these steps:

  1. In the Google Cloud console, go to the Target proxies page.

    Go to Target proxies

  2. Note the name of the target proxy.

  3. To attach the certificate map to the target proxy, run the following command:

    gcloud compute target-https-proxies update PROXY_NAME \
   --certificate-map="CERTIFICATE_MAP_NAME"

    Replace the following:

    • PROXY_NAME: the name of the target proxy
    • CERTIFICATE_MAP_NAME: the name of the certificate map that references your certificate map entry and its associated certificate

If any TLS (SSL) certificates are attached directly to the proxy, the proxy gives preference to the certificates referenced by the certificate map over directly attached certificates.

Create a forwarding rule

Set up a forwarding rule and finish setting up the global external Application Load Balancer. For more information, see Set up a global external Application Load Balancer with VM instance group backends.

Clean up

To revert the changes that you have made in this tutorial, complete the following steps:

  1. Detach the certificate map from the proxy:

    gcloud compute target-https-proxies update PROXY_NAME \
   --clear-certificate-map

    Replace PROXY_NAME with the name of the target proxy.

    Before you detach the certificate map from the proxy, note the following:

    • Make sure that at least one TLS (SSL) certificate is directly attached to the proxy. If no certificates are attached to the proxy, you can't detach the certificate map.
    • Detaching the certificate map from a proxy enables the proxy to resume using TLS (SSL) certificates that were directly attached to the proxy.

  2. Delete the certificate map entry from the certificate map:

    gcloud certificate-manager maps entries delete CERTIFICATE_MAP_ENTRY_NAME \
   --map="CERTIFICATE_MAP_NAME"

    Replace the following:

    • CERTIFICATE_MAP_ENTRY_NAME: the name of the target certificate map entry
    • CERTIFICATE_MAP_NAME: the name of the target certificate map

  3. Delete the certificate map:

    gcloud certificate-manager maps delete CERTIFICATE_MAP_NAME

    Replace CERTIFICATE_MAP_NAME with the name of the target certificate map.

  4. Delete the uploaded certificate:

    gcloud certificate-manager certificates delete CERTIFICATE_NAME

    Replace CERTIFICATE_NAME with the name of the target certificate.

What's next