Azure Stack certificates signing request generation

  • 2 minutes to read
  • Contributors

You can use the Azure Stack Readiness Checker tool to create Certificate Signing Requests (CSRs) suitable for an Azure Stack deployment. Certificates should be requested, generated, and validated with enough time to test before deployment. You can get the tool from the PowerShell Gallery.

You can use the Azure Stack Readiness Checker tool (AzsReadinessChecker) to request the following certificates:

Prerequisites

Your system should meet the following prerequisites before generating the CSR(s) for PKI certificates for an Azure Stack deployment:

  • Microsoft Azure Stack Readiness Checker
  • Certificate attributes:
    • Region name
    • External fully qualified domain name (FQDN)
    • Subject

  • Windows 10 or Windows Server 2016

    Note

    When you receive your certificates back from your certificate authority the steps in Prepare Azure Stack PKI certificates will need to be completed on the same system!

Generate certificate signing request(s)

Use these steps to prepare and validate the Azure Stack PKI certificates:

  1. Install AzsReadinessChecker from a PowerShell prompt (5.1 or above), by running the following cmdlet:

        Install-Module Microsoft.AzureStack.ReadinessChecker

  2. Declare the subject as an ordered dictionary. For example:

    $subjectHash = [ordered]@{"OU"="AzureStack";"O"="Microsoft";"L"="Redmond";"ST"="Washington";"C"="US"}

    Note

    If a common name (CN) is supplied this will be overwritten by the first DNS name of the certificate request.

  3. Declare an output directory that already exists. For example:

    $outputDirectory = "$ENV:USERPROFILE\Documents\AzureStackCSR"

  4. Declare identity system

    Azure Active Directory

    $IdentitySystem = "AAD"

    Active Directory Federation Services

    $IdentitySystem = "ADFS"

  5. Declare region name and an external FQDN intended for the Azure Stack deployment.

    $regionName = 'east'
$externalFQDN = 'azurestack.contoso.com'

    Note

    <regionName>.<externalFQDN> forms the basis on which all external DNS names in Azure Stack are created, in this example, the portal would be portal.east.azurestack.contoso.com.

  6. To generate certificate signing requests for each DNS name:

    New-AzsCertificateSigningRequest -RegionName $regionName -FQDN $externalFQDN -subject $subjectHash -OutputRequestPath $OutputDirectory -IdentitySystem $IdentitySystem

    To include PaaS Services, specify the switch -IncludePaaS

  7. Alternatively, for Dev/Test environments, to generate a single certificate request with multiple Subject Alternative Names add -RequestType SingleCSR parameter and value (not recommended for production environments):

    New-AzsCertificateSigningRequest -RegionName $regionName -FQDN $externalFQDN -subject $subjectHash -RequestType SingleCSR -OutputRequestPath $OutputDirectory -IdentitySystem $IdentitySystem

    To include PaaS Services, specify the switch -IncludePaaS

  8. Review the output:

    New-AzsCertificateSigningRequest v1.1809.1005.1 started.

CSR generating for following SAN(s): dns=*.east.azurestack.contoso.com&dns=*.blob.east.azurestack.contoso.com&dns=*.queue.east.azurestack.contoso.com&dns=*.table.east.azurestack.cont
oso.com&dns=*.vault.east.azurestack.contoso.com&dns=*.adminvault.east.azurestack.contoso.com&dns=portal.east.azurestack.contoso.com&dns=adminportal.east.azurestack.contoso.com&dns=ma
nagement.east.azurestack.contoso.com&dns=adminmanagement.east.azurestack.contoso.com*dn2=*.adminhosting.east.azurestack.contoso.com@dns=*.hosting.east.azurestack.contoso.com
Present this CSR to your Certificate Authority for Certificate Generation: C:\Users\username\Documents\AzureStackCSR\wildcard_east_azurestack_contoso_com_CertRequest_20180405233530.req
Certreq.exe output: CertReq: Request Created

Log location (contains PII): C:\Users\username\AppData\Local\Temp\AzsReadinessChecker\AzsReadinessChecker.log
New-AzsCertificateSigningRequest Completed

  9. Submit the .REQ file generated to your CA (either internal or public). The output directory of New-AzsCertificateSigningRequest contains the CSR(s) necessary to submit to a Certificate Authority. The directory also contains, for your reference, a child directory containing the INF file(s) used during certificate request generation. Be sure that your CA generates certificates using your generated request that meet the Azure Stack PKI Requirements.

Next steps

Prepare Azure Stack PKI certificates