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Spawning multiple droplets (microservices) accessible by IP address, how to secure traffic by SSL?

Posted on March 6, 2021

Hello, I have the solution that creates and destroys droplets whenever needed - multiple $5 instances that live for a couple of hours max. When these droplets are created - the application installed there immediately notifies my “service discovery” about their IP addresses. My admin/master application can query service discovery - obtain their IP and send them a task to perform.

Service discovery and master application are accessible by domains/subdomains, and these have their Let’s encrypt certificate set.

The problem is - how my master application can speak to these droplets in a secure way. The IP constantly changes as droplets are destroyed and recreated (from snapshot).

Do I need to write a script that creates a self-signed certificate during power up?

I’m aware of private IPs, but worker droplets can be created in different data centers.

Appreciate ideas



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Hi there,

I could suggest two things in this case:

  • One option is to add the Droplets behind a load balancer for example and do the SSL termination there. That way you will not have to add an SSL certificate to each Droplet.

  • An alternative solution is to either as you mentioned generate a self-signed SSL and add it to the new Droplets, or have the certificate already generated and stored in your snapshot so that you don’t have to generate a new certificate each time.

  • A third option is to have an Ansible playbook that adds the certificate to the new Droplets once they are created.

Hope that this helps! Regards, Bobby

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