Let’s Encrypt is a free and open Certificate Authority, that simplifies and automates processes of browser-trusted SSL certificates issuing and appliance. Using this package you can automatically install Let’s Encrypt as an add-on to your environment.

The installation can be performed on one of the following Jelastic containers as an entry point:

• Load Balancers - NGINX, Apache LB, HAProxy, Varnish
• Java application servers - Tomcat, TomEE, GlassFish, Payara, Jetty
• PHP application servers - Apache PHP, NGINX PHP
• Ruby application servers - Apache Ruby, NGINX Ruby

If you require Let’s Encrypt SSL for any other stack, just add a load balancer in front of your application servers and install the add-on. SSL termination at load balancing level is used by default in clustered topologies.

The Let’s Encrypt add-on allows to configure SSL for:

• internal environment address, which is composed of environment name and platform domain, to be served with a dummy (i.e. not commonly trusted) SSL certificate; this option can be used for testing purposes
• external domain(s), each of which should be preliminarily bound to external IP of the corresponding node - either master application server instance or load balancer - via A Record or CNAME; provides trusted SSL certificates for production applications

To get deeper insights on how the Let’s Encrypt service works, refer to the official documentation.

Import the raw link of the add-on manifest within Jelastic PaaS dashboard or initiate the installation within Marketplace > Add-Ons.

Note: to access the dashboard you need to be registered at one of the Jelastic Public Cloud providers or have a Private Cloud installation.

In the opened confirmation window:

• provide External Domain(s) of target environment, the possible options are:
  • leave the field blank to create a dummy SSL certificate, assigned to environment internal URL (env_name.{hoster_domain}), for being used in testing
  • insert the preliminary linked external domain(s) to get trusted certificates; if specifying multiple hostnames, separate them with either comma or semicolon

• select the corresponding Environment name within the expandable drop-down list
• choose a Nodes layer with your environment entry point (usually, it’s automatically detected but can be redefined manually)

Finally, click Install and wait a few minutes for the process to be completed.

For additional information on how to renew or reconfigure SSL certificates using this add-on, follow the detailed Let’s Encrypt SSL Certificates article.

Try out the Let’s Encrypt SSL add-on with Jelastic Multi-Cloud PaaS for Java, PHP, Node.js, Ruby, Python, .NET, Go, Docker Swarm and Kubernetes clusters.