If you are looking at accessing your server from a remote location or are going to have devices that access it from the internet, you will need to have an SSL Certificate set up. An SSL (Secure Socket Layer) Certificate is an encrypted connection from a remote computer to another computer. This encrypted line keeps people from “listening in” on your connection and allows your server an extra layer of validation.

In most cases you want an SSL Certificate from a trusted third party registrar who vouches for the identity of your server. You would want this type of certificate if you were hosting a business or a server that a lot of people from the outside world would be accessing. Since we are talking about a home server, the only people accessing your server are people in your household so you really don’t need to buy a certificate you can generate one within the Server.app which is called a self-signed certificate. This certificate still keeps your information secure and works just like a purchased certificate. The difference is that you will get a message when logging in the first time saying that the certificate is not validated by a third party and to make sure you know who generated the certificate. Once you check allow you won’t have to answer that question again and everything works behind the scenes.

In this screencast, I show you how to set up one of these certificates and get it installed on your server.

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Tags: Tutorials, Mac OSX, Server, Apple, Screencast