@jmarhee - Does this mean that no other users on the private-shared network would be able to eavesdrop on the communications, as with out encryption it would be in plain text. I ask because I am in the same boat, where I need to scale out, but I would prefer to not have to use SSL with MySql due to the performance hit (15%-ish). Are you saying that we are safe just using iptables to keep the communications confidential? Here is the link to my question: https://www.digitalocean.com/community/questions/is-encryption-required-on-shared-private-networking