Inbound Failover for HTTPS

skipper · Mar 9, 2012, 2:26 PM

Hi Folks,

is it possible to have a failover for https requests on pfsense (2.0-RELEASE (amd64)? Which tool should i use?

I set up the load balancer (which exists by default) on pfsense but the problem is that the https requests are hopping from web1 to web2 and vice versa. Even with the sticky connection option is behaving the same :/

I tried HAproxy but there i had another problem. When i configure the haproxy for http then the http request is going to web1 (or web2) and it's being redirected to https (as the servers are configured to redirect http to https) and the client receives an SSL Connection Error. If i send directly an https request then i have the same result.
When I configure the haproxy for https then the requests are not even reaching one of the 2 servers, and i can also not access the stats.
for configuring the haproxy i followed this http://forum.pfsense.org/index.php/topic,21748.0.html and this http://conheotiensinh.blogspot.com/2011/12/config-haproxy-with-pfsense-version-201.html

I want to set a failover for my webservers. I want all HTTPS requests to go to web1 and in case web1 is down then the traffic to be (re)directed to web2. is that possible with pfSense?

thnx in advance

marcelloc · Mar 9, 2012, 2:33 PM

I use haproxy for https failover without issues.

what version of haproxy are you using?

The pfsense loadbalancer(relayd) is also usefull for https failover.

skipper · Mar 9, 2012, 3:10 PM

hi marcelloc,

how can i use pfsense loadbalancer for failover, there is just loadbalancing and manual failover mode. I want all requests to go to web1 and just if web1 is down then the https requests go to web2. is that possible? i followed this howto http://www.howtoforge.com/how-to-use-pfsense-to-load-balance-your-web-servers

i tried with haproxy (haproxy-legacy 1.4.19 pkg v 1.0) following this howto http://conheotiensinh.blogspot.com/2011/12/config-haproxy-with-pfsense-version-201.html but since my webservers are redirecting http to https i was getting an ssl error.

marcelloc · Mar 9, 2012, 4:02 PM

@skipper:

how can i use pfsense loadbalancer for failover, there is just loadbalancing and manual failover mode. I want all requests to go to web1 and just if web1 is down then the https requests go to web2. is that possible? i followed this howto http://www.howtoforge.com/how-to-use-pfsense-to-load-balance-your-web-servers

If you do not want to use manual failover, you can create a pool for each server and setup Virtual Server with Virtual Server Pool for the first server and Fall Back Pool for the second

@skipper:

i tried with haproxy (haproxy-legacy 1.4.19 pkg v 1.0) following this howto http://conheotiensinh.blogspot.com/2011/12/config-haproxy-with-pfsense-version-201.html but since my webservers are redirecting http to https i was getting an ssl error.

If you have both http and https going to the same server, this should be transparent.
Did you selected Source as a balance method on your haproxy frontends?

skipper · Mar 9, 2012, 4:14 PM

thnx for the fast reply man!!

how can i create the Fall Back Pool??
i am creating a pool with the just web1 on it and then a second pool with just the web2? is this what u mean?

skipper · Mar 9, 2012, 4:28 PM

I think i got what you mean :)
hope that will work 8)

thnx a lot!!

skipper · Mar 12, 2012, 12:14 PM

i tried it and it seems that it's working!

however, the redirection is very slow,

when i take apache down on web1 then from loadbalncer status i can see that the pool with the web1 is down and the pool with the web2 is up (green). however, the loadbalancer is still forwarding the http(s) requests to web1 for some minutes, and then after 2,3 minutes it switching to web2 ???

is there a way to improve this and make it faster so it will not take so long?

thnx

marcelloc · Mar 12, 2012, 12:23 PM

Are you getting errors from client access or just seeing some traffic going(heath status check from firewall for example) to down server?

skipper · Mar 12, 2012, 12:34 PM

from the client side i cannot access the web (This webpage is not available) and on the FW i can see that the requests are going to web1 even if the load balancer recognizes that it is down. After 2 or 3 minutes is redirecting the traffic to web2.

marcelloc · Mar 12, 2012, 12:39 PM

Did you tried the manual failover or haproxy before this fallback pool?

skipper · Mar 12, 2012, 12:48 PM

thnx for your time and help marcelloc

yes i tried them,
the manual failover cannot do what i need, because i want the traffic to be forwarded automatically to web2 when web1 is down.
and haproxy didn't look to work for https traffic, thus i chose to stay at loadbalancer solution, just i need to improve the time that it takes for forwarding the requests to web2 when web1 is down.
isn't it there a way to make it faster?
the point is that the load balancer is recognizing very fast that the web1 is down, is just not changing the forwarding to web2.

marcelloc · Mar 12, 2012, 12:52 PM

Well, I use haproxy for https as I told you with no issues.

Can you try haproxy again using source as balance method, one pool for http and another pool for https?

skipper · Mar 12, 2012, 1:02 PM

yeah i will give it a try with haproxy (legacy) again and see if it can work.

when i tried i used a virtual carp IP (internet IP) and there i could also access the stats, but i didn't like that the stats were accessible from internet.
is it possible to access the stats (and setup haproxy) in another IP and not in the external IP of haproxy?

marcelloc · Mar 12, 2012, 1:07 PM

I enable stats on internal pools only. Any stat page show stats for all pools.

skipper · Mar 12, 2012, 3:01 PM

haproxy doesn't seem to be working for me :/ it's not even forwarding the requests to web1 or web2, i don't know what i am doing wrong there :-[

furthermore, after some tries to edit the configuration for the frontend is accepting the changes but is not updating the configuration, it seems like there is a bug in haproxy legacy (at least 2.0-RELEASE (amd64)).

as for the load balancer what i noticed is that when i take web1 down i can see from the pool tab that web1 is down (red) but on the virtual server tab it keeps "targeting" (forwarding) the requests to web1, which means that the virtual server is not refreshing the status right after the pool.

marcelloc · Mar 12, 2012, 3:08 PM

Can you screenshot your haproxy config?

skipper · Mar 12, 2012, 3:32 PM

here it's my configuration of haproxy…what am i doing wrong ???

the virtual IP is on the wan interface and it's CARP.
when the client is sending https request is not getting any answer
with http requests is going to pfsense web interface.

thnx once again man!!