The standard installation for Apigee mTLS is to perform the following general steps:

    /opt/apigee/apigee-service apigee-mtls install
    /opt/apigee/apigee-service apigee-mtls setup -f /opt/silent.conf
    /opt/apigee/apigee-service apigee-mtls start

For custom certificate installation, you must perform additional steps, as described in this
section.

To integrate your custom certificates with Apigee mTLS, you copy the following files to both the
`/certs` and `/source` directories on each node in the
cluster. You do this during the installation:

- Generated local_key.pem (unique to each node)
- Generated local_cert.pem (unique to each node)
- The Certificate Authority's certificate.pem
- The Certificate Authority's key.pem

For example, the installation steps for Apigee mTLS with a custom certificate are as follows:

    /opt/apigee/apigee-service apigee-mtls install
    /opt/apigee/apigee-service apigee-mtls setup -f /opt/silent.conf

    Copy the local generated certificate
    cp PATH_TO_LOCAL_CERT /opt/apigee/apigee-mtls/certs/local_cert.pem
    cp PATH_TO_LOCAL_CERT /opt/apigee/apigee-mtls/source/certs/local_cert.pem

    Copy the local generated key
    cp PATH_TO_LOCAL_KEY /opt/apigee/apigee-mtls/certs/local_key.pem
    cp PATH_TO_LOCAL_KEY /opt/apigee/apigee-mtls/source/certs/local_key.pem

    Copy the CA's certificate
    cp PATH_TO_CA_CERT /opt/apigee/apigee-mtls/certs/ca_cert.pem
    cp PATH_TO_CA_CERT /opt/apigee/apigee-mtls/source/certs/ca_cert.pem

    Copy the CA's key
    cp PATH_TO_CA_KEY /opt/apigee/apigee-mtls/certs/ca_key.pem
    cp PATH_TO_CA_KEY /opt/apigee/apigee-mtls/source/certs/ca_key.pem

    /opt/apigee/apigee-service apigee-mtls start

> [!NOTE]
> **NOTE:** Be sure to mimic the permissions and ownership of the original files you are replacing. As a result, if you replace a file whose owner is the `apigee:apigee` user, then set that ownership to be the same for the new file.

This process overrides the certificates that were generated during the initial setup.

After you complete the integration of the new certificates, you can verify that they are valid
by using the instructions in [Verify the certificate](https://docs.apigee.com/private-cloud/v4.52.01/mtls-certs-verify).