HA-Proxy for SSL-Offloading on pfSense: A Comprehensive Guide

In these articles, we provide a comprehensive guide to setting up HA-Proxy for OpenVpn and SSL-Offloading on pfSense. pfSense is a popular open-source firewall solution that offers advanced security features, flexible networking options, and ease of use. The guide is divided into five parts, covering the installation and configuration of OpenVPN on TCP port 443, HA-Proxy, and AMCE for automatic SSL certificates. By following this guide, you'll learn how to improve the security of your website and boost its performance by handling SSL traffic and SSL-Offloading with HA-Proxy. This article is essential for anyone looking to secure their website and improve its performance on pfSense.

This article is divided into five parts, covering the following topics:

Part 1: OpenVPN on TCP Port 443

In this part, we will show you how to set up and configure OpenVPN to run on TCP port 443. This is an important step that will ensure that your VPN is accessible from any location, even behind firewalls that block other ports.

Part 2: Install HA-Proxy and configure frontend and backend for OpenVPN

In this part, we'll demonstrate how to install HA-Proxy on pfSense and set up the frontend and backend configurations for OpenVPN. This will ensure that HA-Proxy is able to properly route traffic to and from the OpenVPN server.

Part 3: Configure HA-Proxy for SSL Traffic

In this part, we'll show you how to configure HA-Proxy to handle SSL traffic, allowing your website to be accessible over a secure HTTPS connection. This will not only improve the security of your network, but also boost the performance of your servers.

Part 4: Install AMCE for Automatic SSL Certificates

In this part, we'll demonstrate how to install and configure AMCE, an open-source tool that automates the process of obtaining and renewing SSL certificates. This will make it easy to keep your website secure and avoid any downtime due to expired SSL certificates.

Part 5: Configure HA-Proxy for SSL-Offloading

In this final part, we'll show you how to configure HA-Proxy to perform SSL-offloading, allowing it to handle the SSL encryption and decryption process and freeing up resources on your backend servers. We'll also show you how to verify that HA-Proxy is working correctly and troubleshoot any issues that may arise.