Testing SSL with multiple SSL-Enabled Websites in IIS

Question

I developed a ASP.NET application that needs to run in multiple instances on my machine (IIS7). I need to set up SSL for each instance, but I lose the option to do binding to a specific host name (that option is only available with regular HTTP). So how do I differentiate the instances?

If I try to add more than 1 SSL binding I get the error "At least one other site is using the same HTTPS binding and the binding is configured with a different certificate (...)".

What to do?

Answer 1

The hostname information is part of the http headder, which is encrypetd (and decrypted) by SSL, so in order to have several SSL websites you have to do either:

• Use a wildcard certificate on all websites and use a hostheadder to route to the correct one: Example: Certificate for *.foo.com Sites: bar.foo.com and main.foo.com and void.foo.com

Or bind each certificate to its own IP

Or... Use SSL Termination from an accelerator device (ISA Server etc)

Answer 2

The question was specifically for IIS 7, however there is a new feature in IIS 8 that works with modern browsers called SNI that can assist with this.

http://www.iis.net/learn/get-started/whats-new-in-iis-8/iis-80-server-name-indication-sni-ssl-scalability