Skip to content

[SSL] document backup certificate race condition known issue #33218

New issue

Have a question about this project? Sign up for a free GitHub account to open an issue and contact its maintainers and the community.

Sign up for GitHub

By clicking “Sign up for GitHub”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy statement. We’ll occasionally send you account related emails.

Already on GitHub? Sign in to your account

Open
ngayerie wants to merge 4 commits into
base: production
Choose a base branch
from
+19 −1
Open

[SSL] document backup certificate race condition known issue #33218

Changes from all commits
Commits
Show all changes
4 commits
Select commit Hold shift + click to select a range
632c831
docs(DEE-3829): add known issue for backup cert deleted after togglin…
ngayerie Sep 4, 2026
f06e76e
docs(DEE-3829): replace enable/disable with turn on/turn off per styl…
ngayerie Sep 4, 2026
209901d
docs(DEE-3829): fix recovery steps and passive voice per bot review
ngayerie Sep 4, 2026
da3b83c
[SSL] apply product feedback to Universal SSL recovery step and ACM w…
ngayerie Sep 5, 2026
File filter

Filter by extension

Filter by extension
Conversations
Failed to load comments.
Loading
Jump to
Jump to file
Failed to load files.
Loading
Diff view
Diff view
20 changes: 19 additions & 1 deletion src/content/docs/ssl/edge-certificates/backup-certificates.mdx
View file
Open in desktop
Original file line number Diff line number Diff line change
Expand Up @@ -19,7 +19,25 @@ For additional details, refer to the [introductory blog post](https://blog.cloud

## Availability

| | Free | Pro | Business | Enterprise |
| | Free | Pro | Business | Enterprise |
| - | - | - | - | - |
| Availability | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Can opt out? | No | No | No | Yes |

## Troubleshooting

### Backup certificate deleted after turning Universal SSL back on

After you turn off and quickly turn Universal SSL back on, your domain may end up without a backup certificate.

When Universal SSL is toggled off and on in quick succession, certificate processing jobs are not guaranteed to run in the order they were submitted. This race condition can cause a newly issued backup certificate to be deleted before it becomes active.

To recover your backup certificate:

1. If another valid edge certificate is already active, or if you are operating in a maintenance window, turn Universal SSL off again.
2. Wait several minutes.
3. Turn Universal SSL back on, then allow time for Cloudflare to issue a new backup certificate.

If you need uninterrupted certificate coverage, consider using [Advanced Certificate Manager](/ssl/edge-certificates/advanced-certificate-manager/) and ensure an advanced certificate is already issued and active before toggling Universal SSL.

For more troubleshooting help, refer to [Troubleshooting SSL errors](/ssl/troubleshooting/).