Before you begin

After you create a new certificate, the CPS default deploy it to the ​Akamai​ staging and production network, after it's been signed by the Certificate Authority (CA). This also applies to the renewal of an existing certificate, that currently exists in production (active certificates are automatically renewed by the CPS, and the CPS deploys the new certificate back to staging and production after it's been signed by the CA).

If you'd like to test your certificates, you need to change this default to have the certificate pushed to the ​Akamai​ staging network only first.

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Before you change the default to staging

• Once you set staging as your deployment network, this setting remains enabled. Renewals of this certificate will always push it only to staging first, to allow for testing. You have to turn this setting off, to return to automatic deployment to both staging and production.
• You need to apply this setting to a newly created certificate (in the In Progress tab) before it reaches the "Receiving certificate" phase of the process. A certificate past this phase is moved to Active, and you need to renew it to have it pushed to staging.
• Seven days before an active certificate expires, CPS deploys the new certificate to production to avoid leaving you with an expired certificate on your network. (Even if your new certificate is still in the staging network.)

How to

1. Select the Active or the In Progress tab and locate the desired certificate.

2. Click No in the Always Test on Staging before deployment column.

3. Select Yes next to Test Certificate.

The next time your certificate renews, it automatically deploys to the staging network.

Next steps

Where do I test?

Testing is performed outside of CPS, on the Edge Staging Network (ESN). The ESN provides an environment to test your ​Akamai​ configurations without impact to production configurations. After testing the functionality on the ESN, you can use the same certificate and settings in production. The ESN is a small network of ​Akamai​ Edge servers built to simulate ​Akamai​'s production network to test most of your site or application functionality with current production version configuration options and functions.

For more information on the ESN, see Test your configuration. You can also contact your account representative with questions or issues with your service on the ESN.

My testing was successful

After you ensure the certificate works in staging, you select Push to production in the CPS to deploy the certificate to production, to "go live" with it.