In this demonstration, we're going to certify the subordinate CA to the root CA.
We do this by obtaining a certificate request file, or .req.
We issue the certificate with CA1,
install that certificate on CA2, and then start CA2 certificate
services, and at this time, we can take CA1 offline.
We start off here with our Certification Authority for ca1, and what we want to
do is kind of redirect that by coming over here and saying Retarget
Certification Authority. We want it on the local computer.
I'll click on Finish. It just takes a second, and notice, when I
right‑click here and go to All Tasks, this is not running. It
needs a certificate in order to run.
So if we said Start Service,
it'll tell us, you've got install the CA certificate, which is right down here,
Install CA Certificate. Here it is on the root, on the C drive,
it makes it easy for us. Click on Open. It takes just a second and then
loads, and we can come right here, go to All Tasks and Start Service. It
goes through, makes sure that this is indeed certified, and then, after
this is complete, there we have it.
We are all ready with our subordinate enterprise
certification authority that has our standalone
Certification Authority root on the upper level.
So that is how you certify a subordinate CA to a root CA. So now,
we're pretty much done with our root CA. We just have to fire it up
every once in a while, if we need another subordinate CA, because our
subordinate CA is all certified,
it's ready to go, and there's no advantage to keeping our root CA online.
So what I'm going to do now is take it offline.
Let's go to CA1, and here we are on CA1.
We're going to just go ahead and take this and delete it; it's already
been installed, and then we simply come down here,
go to Power, and say shut down, and then click on Continue. It
shuts down, and we are done with our root CA.
Now we go to the subordinate or issuing CA to do the rest of our work here.
So that is how you certify a subordinate CA to a root CA in Microsoft Windows 2022.