How To Enable SSL on Windows Azure - J.D. Meier's Blog - Site Home

As part of our Azure Security Guidance project, we tested setting up SSL during our exploration. To do so, we created a self-signed certificate and deployed it to Azure. This is a snapshot of the rough steps we used:

Step 1 - Create and Install a test certificate
Step 2 - Create a Visual Studio project
Step 3 - Upload the certificate to Windows Azure Management portal
Step 4 - Publish the project to Windows Azure
Step 5 - Test the SSL

Step 1 - Create and Install a test certificate

Open a Visual Studio command prompt
Change your active directory to the location where you wish to place your certificate files
Enter the following 2 commands

makecert -r -pe -n "CN=AzureSSL" -sky 1 "azuressl.cer" -sv "azuressl.pvk" -ss My

pvk2pfx -pvk "azuressl.pvk" -spc "azuressl.cer" -pfx "azuressl.pfx" -pi password1

Note - You can find an explanation of the command line arguments for makecert.exe and pvk2pfx.exe on MSDN.

Step 2 - Create a Visual Studio project

File, New Project
Select "Cloud" from "Installed Templates" list on left
Type "AzureSSL" for name, and hit OK
Select Web Role from the list, and ">" to add to solution
Click OK
Right-click \Solution\AzureSSL\Roles\WebRole1, and select "Properties"
Select "Certificates" tab on left
Click "Add Certificate" button on top bar
Change "Store Location" drop-down to "CurrentUser"
Click "..." button under Thumbprint
Select AzureSSL cert from list and click OK
Select "Endpoints" tab on left
Enable the "HTTPS:" checkbox
Select "Certificate1" from the SSL certificate name drop-down

Step 3 - Upload the certificate to Windows Azure Management portal

Open http://windows.azure.com
Select the Service you will deploy to, or create one if necessary
At the bottom of the management page, find the Certificates area, and click the "Manage" link on the right
Hit the "browse" button and select the PFX file created in step 1
Enter "passWord1" and confirm it in the password textboxes
Click "Upload"

Step 4 - Publish the project to Windows Azure

In your Visual Studio project from step 2, right click \Solution\AzureSSL and select "Publish"
In the Windows Explorer window that pops up, copy the path to the directory displayed into the clipboard
Switch to your browser with the Windows Azure Management portal open
If you are still in the manage certificates screen, return to the service management screen
Click the "Deploy" button
Under "Application Package" area, select the "Browse" button
In file open dialog that pops up, paste the path from your clipboard to navigate to your VS package
Select the AzureSSL.cspkg, and click "Open"
Under the "Configuration Settings" area, select the "Browse" button
Select the ServiceConfiguration.cscfg file, and click "Open"
At the bottom of the Deploy screen, enter AzureSSL in the textbox
Click "Deploy"
When the deployment completes, click the "Run" button

Step 5 - Test the SSL

Once the Web Role has completed initializing, click on the "Web Site URL" link
Change the URL scheme to HTTPS (in other words change http to https), and open the page

Your results may vary here based on your browser, but you'll most likely see a warning about the certificate being for a different site, or not being from a trusted source. If you permit access to the site, the page will render empty and you browser should indicate that the page was delivered over SSL with a lock icon or something similar.

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