I just found a workaround.

Spaces lets you create subdomain certs with Let’s Encrypt. Those subdomain certs will show up in the dropdown list on the Load Balancer. You basically can create a subdomain cert (for a CDN), save it, then remove it. The cert will still exist and will be available as an option in the load balancer dropdown.

It seems DO indeed has this ability but they forgot to add it to the Load Balancer cert creation dialog.

p.s. I think DO should document this limitation. I had to learn the hard way and by contacting support that my use case wasn’t supported.

Same issue occurs with Spaces CDN. If you try to create a LetsEncrypt certificate with a sub-domain managed by Digital Ocean, it doesn’t allow you to.

This is a limitation of Digital Ocean, not of DNS or LetsEncrypt/ACME. It is possible to use certbot with DNS challenge on a sub-domain hosted on Digital Ocean’s DNS. Perhaps a script could be written that runs the challenges and pushes the new certificate directly to Digital Ocean, while we wait for this feature to be properly implemented.

I’ll report back here if I get around to that.

Hey friend,

Great question! Thanks for posting it here. My recommendation, in this case, would be to set up a load balancer on a droplet instead of using our pre-made ones. While these tutorials are for Ubuntu 14, not that much has changed:

https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-set-up-highly-available-haproxy-servers-with-keepalived-and-floating-ips-on-ubuntu-14-04
https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-secure-haproxy-with-let-s-encrypt-on-ubuntu-14-04

While I love our load balancer service, you’ve clearly identified a use case that they do not stand up to right now, and I find that building your own LB is fairly straight forward. Honestly, they don’t need much in the way of maintenance once set up.

Jarland

Thanks! Hopefully, DO will remove that limitation. Lets Encrypt has no trouble creating certs for subdomains. I can’t understand why DO should require control of DNS for the entire domain.

Just ran into this same situation. I have a subdomain where the DNS is delegated to DO. Can’t create a load balancer with SSL termination because DO doesn’t manage the TLD. Seems silly that I have to spin up more droplets and configure my own load balancer because of a limitation like this.