For a project I'm working on I will have multiple servers and lots of subdomains (eg- *.mydomain.com). I'm thinking of getting this ssl cert from godaddy- Unlimited Subdomains (Wildcard) $199.99/yr
Will I be able to use the cert on all the servers or do I need to buy a cert for each server since they each have a unique ip?
certificates are bound to a hostname (or wildcard hostname), so you're fine using the same cert on multiple machines.
However, when requesting a certificate, you usually create a private key on one of the servers. This private key needs to be copied to all machines in addition to the actual certificate that you recieve.
One scenario is where you have www.domain.com resolving to an IP of a load-balancer, which in turn forwards the traffic to multiple servers. In that case, you only need a certificate for www.domain.com that you copy (with the private key) to all servers in your cluster.
Jishi, great answer but i wanted a small amount of clarification...
you mention a setup with a load balancer that routes traffic between a set of machines to server the client. so the certificate & private key need to be on the balancer AND all the machines behind the balancer?