How to replicate SSL Certificates for a custom domain in different regions

Question

TL;DR;

What's the way to distribute an SSL certificate across regions, so that no matter which region the application is hosted - it will serve the SSL certificate for the requested custom domains.

Explanation:

We have an Azure Web app where we add custom domains per user. We want to scale the app in different geographic regions behind a traffic manager so that when the website is accessed from Australia - it will be served from the Auatralia's Web App, and when the request comes from Europe - the web app in Europe will serve the request. So, in current situation, regardless of where the request is coming from it will always be served from one location, for example: Europe.

The challenge here is we can add the custom domain in only one of the web app, due to the fact that you need a CNAME entry pointing to an individual URL. It cannot point at two different URLs at the same time. It is possible to route the requests to individual apps but the other web app will not be able to serve the SSL certificate if it's mapped on App1 in region1.

How to distribute or maintain the pool of certificates which can be access by the web apps in different regions? Is there any way with Microsoft Azure?

Update: We are going to have N number of custom domains, and so N number of SSL certs to handle. AFAIK, Azure Front Door and Azure Traffic Manager - we can map a custom domain to their own endpoints, and is limited to one custom domain. Here I'm talking about handling thousands of external custom domains/SSL Certs.

Thanks in Advance! ????

Answer 1

Instead of using Traffic Manager, I would use Azure Front Door. This has a built-in SSL certificate management. You don't even need to purchase the certificate yourself.

Answer 2

What I understood from the question is basically you would like to address the request from the same region rather than from one location. In that case, I would suggest have a look at azure application gateway. Here, you can define path-based load-balancing rules. In that path based, basically you can have one attribute which identifies location say /api/emea/images, /api/apac/images. Off-course you need to first define API on these lines to accommodate some kind of identifier. Once done, then based on this you can create this load-balancing rule in application gateway. Then, you can have different backend pools say one sitting in EMEA region with four-five virtual machines, that can handle traffic from EMEA region. Similarly, it goes for another region as well. Try implementing the same on these lines. You can also explore front door option as well as it handles load-balancing globally and your certificate related stuff should also get addressed. It should address your problem.