PRTG Manual: Using Your Own SSL Certificate with PRTG's Web Server
This section will give you a brief overview on how to use your own trusted SSL certificate files with the PRTG web server.
What is SSL?
PRTG supports Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) to encrypt all data entered and shown in the Web Interface, in the Enterprise Console, or in the Smartphone Apps. That ensures that no sensitive information can be intercepted when sending data between the PRTG core server and your client software.
By default PRTG is already delivered with an SSL certificate so you can use secure connections to your PRTG core server. However, these certificate files are not signed by a valid authority, which is why browsers show an SSL Certificate Warning when you try to access the web interface. Despite this warning your connection is still encrypted successfully.
To remove the browser warning you can obtain a certificate that is valid for your own domain name and signed by a valid authority. The certificate must be provided in the correct format and can then be copied to your PRTG program directory (see Data Storage).
PRTG Needs PEM Encoded Format and Unencrypted Key
There are many different issuers for certificates, and there are different formats certificates can be provided in.
PRTG needs three different files, named correctly, containing data in the expected encoding and format:
- prtg.crt: This is the certificate for your PRTG server. It has to be stored in PEM encoded format.
- prtg.key: This is the private key matching your server certificate. It has to be stored in PEM encoded format and may not be encrypted! Please make sure that you provide this file in decrypted format! The best way to check this is to open the file in a text editor. If you find a line containing the word "ENCRYPTED", the file still needs to be decrypted before you can use it with PRTG. Please decrypt using an SSL tool (e.g. OpenSSL) and your key password.
- root.pem: This is the public root certificate of your certificate's issuer. It has to be stored in PEM encoded format and must contain all necessary root certificates of your issuer in one file. If there is more than one PEM encoded root certificate, please use a text editor to copy all of them into a single file (the order does not matter).
Once ready, copy these three files to the /cert sub folder of your PRTG program directory (please backup existing files) and restart your PRTG core server service (see PRTG Server Administrator). Note: PRTG services won't restart if the files are not provided in exactly the expected format!
For detailed instructions and examples, installation descriptions for various certificates (including Wildcard certificates), as well as links to certificate tools and converters, please see the More section below.
Knowledge Base: How can I establish a secure web interface connection to PRTG?
Knowledge Base: How can I use a trusted SSL certificate with the PRTG web interface?
Keywords: Certificate,Certificate Trusted SSL,SSL,Web Server,Web Server Certificate