Use HAproxy with SSL and X-Forwarded-For Headers – PHP SSL Configuration Guide

haproxyload balancingpfsensessl

I have the following setup:

(internet) ---> [  pfSense Box  ]    /-> [ Apache / PHP server ]
                [running HAproxy] --+--> [ Apache / PHP server ]
                                    +--> [ Apache / PHP server ]
                                     \-> [ Apache / PHP server ]

For HTTP requests this works great, requests are distributed to my Apache servers just fine. For SSL requests, I had HAproxy distributing the requests using TCP load balancing, and it worked however since HAproxy didn't act as a proxy, it didn't add the X-Forwarded-For HTTP header, and the Apache / PHP servers didn't know the client's real IP address.

So, I added stunnel in front of HAproxy, reading that stunnel could add the X-Forwarded-For HTTP header. However, the package which I could install into pfSense does not add this header… also, this apparently kills my ability to use KeepAlive requests, which I would really like to keep. But the biggest issue which killed that idea was that stunnel converted the HTTPS requests into plain HTTP requests, so PHP didn't know that SSL was enabled and tried to redirect to the SSL site.

How can I use HAproxy to load balance across a number of SSL servers, allowing those servers to both know the client's IP address and know that SSL is in use? And if possible, how can I do it on my pfSense server?

Or should I drop all this and just use nginx?

Best Answer

You dont need to drop it all, you could just use nginx in front of haproxy for SSL support, keeping all your load balancing config. You dont even need to use nginx for HTTP if you don't want to. Nginx can pass both X-Forwarded-For and a custom header indicating SSL is in use (and client cert information if you want). Nginx config snippet that sends required information:

proxy_set_header SCHEME $scheme;      # http/https
proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
proxy_set_header CLIENT_CERT $ssl_client_raw_cert;
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