If you are using different hostname for each server then you need different 
certificates or SAN certificate with corresponding subjectAltName extensions. 
Certificates verifies hostname so if your hostnames are different then you have 
to use different certificates. However it is more useful if you keep your 
server hostname and service hostname separately. Your server hostnames might be 
mx1.mydomain, mx2.mydomain but you can use imap.mydomain as dovecot service 
name (in this case you can use same certificate for dovecot but different 
certificates for postfix and you also will load balance clients connecting to 
dovecot instance). ‎Or you might use same hostname for both servers (in that 
case you need only one certificate) and dovecot and postfix will be 
automatically load balanced. 

Anvar Kuchkartaev 
an...@anvartay.com 
  Original Message  
From: SH Development
Sent: jueves, 12 de octubre de 2017 05:17 a.m.
To: dovecot@dovecot.org
Subject: SSL overview...


Can someone help me understand the overall picture of SSL certificates in this 
scenario?

I have a working dovecot/postfix/mysql server. It has a certificate.

I now want to create a second, essentially duplicate configured server for use 
with replication.


What is the relationship between the certificate and the hostname, or the DNS 
entry since the certs are created using the server’s domain name?

mail.serverA.mydomain has a certificate that was created using 
mail.serverA.mydomain. The server's hostname is mail.serverA.mydomain.

Now enter the new server. It would probably be:

mailserverB.mydomain and a certificate created using mail.serverB.mydomain. The 
server’s hostname would be mail.serverB.mydomain.

My questions:

1. Can I use the same certificate on both servers since they are serving email 
for the same domain?
2. Does the hostname have to be the same as the domain name, and thus the name 
used to create the cert?

Sorry if I’m muddled about this. It was never really an issue until I wanted to 
add a secondary server into the mix.

Ethon B.

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