Installing SSL certificates on AWS EC2 Instance not using Cloudfront or Elastic Load Balancing

Question

I have an EC2 instance which runs a website I want to add an SSL certificate for. From Amazon's documentation and other sources the only way they have stated an SSL certificate can be added is through:

• Cloudfront
• Elastic Load Balancing

I am not already using these for my website due to the added cost of these services. Is there another method of adding an SSL certificate without using Cloudfront or ELB? Thanks.

Answer 1

If you want to use SSL on a EC2 instance directly, you must obtain and install a certificate through the application running on your instance, (e.g. Apache, Nginx). There is nothing special required because your instance is running on AWS.

You will not be able to use the free certificates provided by Amazon Certificate Manager, they can not be exported for use with services other than ELB and CloudFront.

Answer 2

I would take a look at using Let's Encrypt. It's free and you can automate the renewal process.

1. https://letsencrypt.org