Before being able to enable SSL on WebSphere, you need to have your own certificate. This certificate can be a self-certificate for testing purpose but in any production case, you should have a certificate issued by a Trusted CA. The following steps describe how to get your own certificate.

Creating a keystore
A keystore is where your private key will be saved, in a secure way, and the certificate belongs to it. This keystore can be created either with the SUN keytool or with ikeyman a tool from IBM that is distributed with WebSphere Advanced Single Server Edition 4.0.

Starting ikeyman tool

The command to start it is:
./ikeyman.sh
Once it is started, the following screen appears:

Specifying a keystore
From the main application, you can either use an existing keystore or create a new one. In the example below we want to create a new keystore that will be used only by WebSphere.
In the IBM Key Management console, select the option Key Database File/New. A dialog box will appear:

The options are:

Option	Value
Key database type	JKS
File Name	The name of the keystore. In the example: .keystore
Location	The location of the keystore. In the example: /usr/bin/java/websphere/bin

Creating a certificate request
You first need to create a certificate request before getting your certificate. The certificate request is created in Create/New Certificate Request. A new dialog box will appear where you are asked to enter some information:

The options are:

Option	Value
Key Label	A name that identify the request in list screen. For instance, sitecert
Key Size	Use the default value of 1024
Common Name	This is the Fully Qualified Domain Name, this is what will be in the URL after (but not including) the 'http://' and before the next '/'. Example www.mydomain.com
Organization	The Organization name. Example Aust Domains
Organization Unit	The Organizational Unit. Example R&D
Locality	The locality of your organization. Example Manchester
State/Province	The province of your organization. Example Salford Quays
	The country of your organization. Example GB
Request file name	This is the name of the file where your CSR will be created. In the example: /usr/bin/java/websphere/bin/certreq.arm

Now click on OK to generate your request. When the request is created, a key pair is also generated (a private key only stored in the keystore and a public key stored in the certificate you receive). If the request is successfully created, a dialog should inform you about it:

You will need the contents of this file when applying for your certificate.