Question
How to re-encrypt Load Balancer-to-server traffic?
- Posted April 24, 2018
- Load BalancingSecurityLet's EncryptVPNDigitalOceanNetworkingUbuntu 16.04
Hi all,
I’m about to set up a Load Balancer with 2 droplets (with more droplets likely added in the future). I understand that with DigialOcean Load Balancers I can SSL/TLS encrypt the user-to-loadbalancer traffic, but then the traffic will pass unencrypted from the load balancer to the 2 backend server droplets.
I know that SSL Passthrough (i.e. end-to-end encryption) on DigitalOcean LoadBalancer is possible, but am concerned about DDoS attacks and would like to perform layer 7 functions on the data … therefore passthrough doesn’t seem suitable. I’m therefore looking into “re-encrypting” the loadbalancer-to-server traffic.
- Do DigitalOcean load balancers allow for re-encryption?
- How can I set up such re-encryption? (preferably on DigitalOcean LoadBalancers, or otherwise if this isn’t possible)
- Is re-encryption even value-add if I have set up an OpenVPN around my back-end server droplets (I haven’t figured out how to include Load Balancer in the VPN)?
Apologies, networking is still fairly new to me!
Thanks, Emma
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If security is required from end to end, your best option is to use SSL Passthrough. Your droplets will suffer the performance overhead of SSL encryption regardless of Passthrough or Re-encryption at the Load Balancer.
If security is not crucial, then off-loading the encryption workload to the Load Balancers is your best option for performance.