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I'm sorry but if you aren't using automated renewals then you are not using let's encrypt the way it's intended to be used. You should take this as an opportunity to get that set up.
Technically my renews aren't automated. I have a nightly cronjob that should renew certificates and restart services, but when the certificates need renewal, it always fails because it wants to open a port I'm already using in order to answer the challenge.
I hear there's an apache module / configuration I can use, but I never got around to setting it up. So, when the cron job fails, I get an email and go run a script that stops apache, renews certs, and restarts services (including apache). I will be a bit annoying to have to do that more often, but maybe it'll help motivate me to configure apache (or whatever) correctly.
Debian Stable
You could try using the DNS challenge instead; I find it a lot more convenient as not all my services are exposed.
I'm using automated renewals.
But, that just means there's a new cert file on disk. Now I have to convince a half a dozen different apps to properly reload that changed cert. That means fighting with Systemd. So Systemd has won the first few skirmishes, and I haven't had the time or energy to counterattack. Now instead of having to manually poke at it 4x per year, it's going to be closer to once a month. Ugh.
You could try a path unit watching the cert directory (there are caveats around watching the symlinks directly) or most acme implementations have post renewal hooks you can use which would be more reliable.
Half a dozen sounds like a lot, kinda curious what you are running? If they all are web services maybe use a reverse proxy or something?
Don't worry, they'll sell you new software for another $50.00/m/certificate to help with the new certificate fiddling you now have to do monthly. It didn't make sense for them to release it until they pushed through the 45 day window change through backchannels.
While I agree for my personal use, it's not so easy in an enterprise environment. I'm currently working to get services migrated OFF my servers that utilize public certificates to avoid the headache of manual intervention every 45 days.
While this is possible for servers and services I manage, it's not so easy for other software stacks we have in our environment. Thankfully I don't manage them, but I'm sure I'll be pulled into them at some point or another to help figure out the best path forward.
The easy path is obviously a load balanced front-end to load the certificate, but many of these services are specialized and have very elaborate ways to bind certificates to services outside of IIS or Apache, which would need to trust the newly issued load balancer CA certificate every 47 days.
Yeah, this has become an issue for us at work as well.
Currently we are doing a POC for an in-house developed solution where a azure function app handles the renewal of certificates for any domain we have, both wildcard and named, and place the certificates in a key vault where services that need them can get access.
Looks to be working, so the main issue now is finding a non-US certificate provider that supports acme. EU has some but even more local there aren't many options.