Managing externally generated certs with cert-manager

[Ipsit Kumar]

Hi Team,

Greetings!! 

Can someone please help me understand, if I can manage the life-cycle of an externally generated certificate  which is being used in my kubernetes cluster where we also have cert-manager installed. 

I tried creating a certificate resource pointing to the secret where the externally generated certificate is stored and realised that cert-manager is creating a new certificate based on the specification set in the certificate resource re-using the private key from the secret. 

My intension is to just manage the renewal of this certificate when they are about to expire by means of using cert-manager. 

Can someone please help me understand if this is achievable ? 

Thanks in advance.