New Central Certificate utility in IIS 8

Windows Server 2012 and the IIS 8.0 web server bring – among many other things – a neat new feature for managing SSL certificates: the Central Certificate Store (CCS).

This new features answers the need to bring some order to the certificate chaos. Previously, as in IIS 7.x, when you had multiple web servers, you had to copy your certificate files (usually .pfx or .cer files) to each and every web server locally. Once the renewal time came, you had to make sure you copied the right file again to all your servers, and so on.

Now with IIS 8, you can enable the Central Certificate Store, and this allows you to have a single file share (point to by an UNC path) in which you centrally store those certificate files. Very good news indeed, as this reduces the certificate file hassle a lot.

If you are interested in learning more, check out a new Technet Magazine article on the topic.