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AWS › AWS Certificate Manager (ACM)

How does ACM handle automatic certificate renewal, and what is required to keep this working smoothly?

Intermediate

Answer

ACM automatically attempts to renew certificates before they expire, and for certificates validated using DNS validation, this renewal process happens completely automatically as long as the original validation CNAME record remains in place in your DNS configuration, meaning you generally never need to manually renew or reinstall a certificate managed through ACM once it is properly set up.
aws acm list-certificates --certificate-statuses ISSUED
Real-world example A company that initially set up DNS validation for its certificate through Route 53 never experiences a certificate expiration incident, since ACM automatically handles renewal in the background without any manual intervention required.

Common follow-ups: What happens if automatic renewal fails for some reason?;Does ACM send any notifications before a certificate is due to renew?