This article applies to:

• MailMarshal (SEG)
• Transport Layer Security (TLS) functionality

Question:

• What information do I enter in TLS wizard when I am creating a certificate signing request to send to a certificate authority?
• What is the Common Name for a MailMarshal TLS certificate?

Information:

Most fields in the TLS wizard are self explanatory or explained in the Help.
The Common Name and Alternative Names are particularly important and the required information can differ depending on the environment.

Common Name

• In all cases, the Common Name should be the fully qualified host name of the machine where you are creating the certificate (such as mailserver.mycompany.com). This is often the server name and domain name from Windows properties, but it could also be the Server Host Name set in the Mail Server Properties > Advanced (for each processing server).
• Load balanced or Round robin DNS: If you have multiple processing node servers accepting messages under the same DNS name, all servers have the same Common Name. You should run the TLS wizard only on one server, request and install one certificate, then export/import it (or copy it) to the other servers.
• Differing MX records: In an enterprise scenario where multiple processing nodes accept mail under different DNS names, you can use a separate certificate for each node. You could create a certificate signing request on each of the nodes. Each certificate should use the external DNS name of the specific server as its common name.
  • In versions of MailMarshal SMTP/SEG that support Alternative Names (SAN), you can use the same certificate for all nodes by entering the alternative name information as described below.

Alternative Names

• Where an installation accepts email for multiple domains, you should enter each domain (not FQDN) in the Alternative Names field of the wizard (one per line).
  • For example:
    example.com
    sub.example.com
    example2.com
• Where an installation includes more than one processing server, you should include the FQDN of each server in the Alternative Names.
  • For example:
    mail1.example.com
    mail2.example.com

Note:

• In all scenarios you might need to use chained certificates as described in the related articles linked below.
• Alternative Names (SAN) are supported in version 7.0 and above.