My particular situation applies to Windows but I welcome knowing how this would differ from other practical applications. The subsets contain information that I'm basing my logic on, please correct them if I am mistaken.
Here is what I'm doing:
- From Exchange Management Shell, I generate a certificate request.
i. At this point, a private key is generated.
- I approve the request on the Certificate Authority.
i. The CA never sees my private key.
- I obtain the certificate (.cer) from the CA and install it to the local machine certificate store.
i. The private key is automatically merged with the corresponding certificate.
In step one: Where does the private key currently reside?
In step three: Does the private key still reside in the same location as in (1), or is it now only present within the certificate?
How can you merge this private key with the certificate other than importing it into the store?