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Superseded by: N/A

Related: GEODE-7852

Problem

Users would like to be able to put Geode servers behind a proxy. This would allow users to avoid having to allocate public IP addresses for all of the servers, as well as being able to control and monitor access to the servers.

Currently, this is not very well supported. Geode clients discover servers using locators. It is possible to set the hostname-for-clients on all servers to point to the proxy server, but this is not ideal. Geode clients rely on being able to connect to specific  servers for features like PR single hop and client server queues. This means that the clients need a protocol that will allow them to tell the proxy which server they connect to.

Anti-Goals

• It is an anti-goal to deal with configuring the proxy itself.
• It is an anti-goal to support all different kinds of proxies. In the future we may consider supporting other types of proxies, but this proposal is to support one specific type - a SNI proxy.
• We're not recommending any specific SNI proxy
• This proposal does not include supporting a proxy for WAN or P2P connectivity. In the future we may add support for that as well.

Solution

We will add a configuration option to the client to set a SNI proxy for the client to connect to the servers through. When this option is set, all connections from the client to the locator or the servers will use this SNI proxy. When configuring a Pool, the names of the locators or the names of the servers provided in the pool configuration will be passed as the Server Name Indicator field when the client connects to the proxy. The proxy must be able to resolve these names and connect to the correct locator or server.

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The proxyAddress parameter will be in the familiar URL format[1][2], specifically the authority part of a URL without any userinfo part.

Performance Impact

Connecting through a proxy may impact the performance of client/server messaging, but it is up to the user to decide if they want to use this feature or not. SNI proxies do require the use of TLS, which also adds overhead.

Backwards Compatibility and Upgrade Path

This is a client side setting, so there should be no backwards compatibility or upgrade concerns.

Prior Art

Alternative ways to introduce a proxy would be:

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Geode also added support to set the SNI field in the client hello as part of GEODE-7414. With those changes, a user can provide a SSLParameterExtension callback that can modify any of the SSLParameters, including the SNI server name. If a proxy of type SNI is set and the SSLParameterExtension is also set, the SSLParameterExtension will run after geode has set the SNI name, and can potential modify it.

FAQ

Is this platform specific?

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• This is an implementation detail that will be left to the users discretion.

Errata

What are minor adjustments that had to be made to the proposal since it was approved?

References

[1] Description of URL syntax from Wikipedia article on URLs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/URL#Syntax

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