What action must be performed to associate an SSL certificate with an Elastic Load Balancer?

To successfully associate an SSL certificate with an Elastic Load Balancer (ELB), it is necessary to first import the SSL certificate into AWS Certificate Manager (ACM) or Identity and Access Management (IAM). This is a foundational step because the ELB needs access to a valid SSL certificate to establish secure (HTTPS) connections with clients.

When you import the certificate into IAM, it can then be associated with the load balancer either at the time of creation or afterward. Importing the certificate gives AWS the necessary information about the certificate's validity and usage.

In the context of managing SSL certificates for ELB, once the certificate is available in IAM, you can specify it during the configuration of the load balancer. This flexibility allows for effective management of certificates, including the option to update or adjust configurations as necessary.

Associating a certificate during the load balancer's creation or afterward can depend on how you manage your infrastructure. However, the key point is that the certificate must be in IAM and managed appropriately before it can be tied to an ELB.

Other options might lack clarity or misrepresent the process; for example, certificates can indeed be used with ELB, and they cannot simply be activated or utilized without being properly imported and associated first