Enable HTTP Proxy for Linux Agents

You can configure the agent to allow it to communicate with the Sysdig collector through an HTTP proxy. HTTP proxy is usually configured to offer greater visibility and better management of the network.

Agent Behaviour

The agent can connect to the collector through an HTTP proxy by sending an HTTP CONNECT message and receiving a response. The proxy then initiates a TCP connection to the collector. These two connections form a tunnel that acts like one logical connection.

By default, the agent will encrypt all messages sent through this tunnel. This means that after the initial CONNECT message and response, all the communication on that tunnel is encrypted by SSL end-to-end. This encryption is controlled by the top-level ssl parameter in the agent configuration.

Optionally, the agent can add a second layer of encryption, securing the CONNECT message and response. This second layer of encryption may be desired in the case of HTTP authentication if there is a concern that network packet sniffing could be used to determine the user’s credentials. This second layer of encryption is enabled by setting the ssl parameter to true in the http_proxy section of the agent configuration. See Examples for details.

Configuration

You specify the following parameters at the same level as http_proxy in the dragent.yaml file. These existing configuration options affect the communication between the agent and collector (both with and without a proxy).

ssl: Default: true. It is not recommended to change this setting. If set to false, the metrics sent from the agent to the collector are unencrypted.
ssl_verify_certificate: Determines whether the agent verifies the SSL certificate sent from the collector (default is true).

The following configuration options affect the behavior of the HTTP Proxy setting. You specify them under the http_proxy heading in the dragent.yaml file.

proxy_host: Indicates the hostname of the proxy server. The default is an empty string, which implies communication through an HTTP proxy is disabled.
proxy_port: Specifies the port on the proxy server the agent should connect to. The default is 0, which indicates that the HTTP proxy is disabled.
proxy_user : Required if HTTP authentication is configured. This option specifies the username for the HTTP authentication. The default is an empty string, which indicates that authentication is not configured.
proxy_password : Required if HTTP authentication is configured. This option specifies the password for the HTTP authentication. The default is an empty string. Specifying proxy_user with no proxy_password is allowed.
ssl: Default: false. If set to true, the connection between the agent and the proxy server is encrypted.
Note that this parameter requires the top-level ssl parameter to be enabled, as the agent does not support SSL to the proxy but unencrypted traffic to the collector. This additional security prevents you from misconfiguring the agent assuming the metrics are as well encrypted end-to-end when they are not.
ssl_verify_certificate: Determines whether the agent will verify the certificate presented by the proxy.
This option is configured independently of the top-level ssl_verify_certificate parameter. This option is enabled by default. If the provided certificate is not correct, this option can cause the connection to the proxy server to fail.
ca_certificate: The path to the CA certificate for the proxy server. If ssl_verify_certificate is enabled, the CA certificate must be signed appropriately.

Examples

SSL Between Proxy and Collector

In this example, SSL is enabled only between the proxy server and the collector.

collector_port: 6443
ssl: true
ssl_verify_certificate: true
http_proxy:
  proxy_host: squid.yourdomain.com
  proxy_port: 3128

SSL

The following example shows SSL is enabled between the agent and the proxy server as well as between the proxy server and the collector.

collector_port: 6443
ssl: true
http_proxy:
  proxy_host: squid.yourdomain.com
  proxy_port: 3129
  ssl: true
  ssl_verify_certificate: true
  ca_certificate: /usr/proxy/proxy.crt

SSL with Username and Password

The following configuration instructs the agent to connect to a proxy server located at squid.yourdomain.com on port 3128. The agent will request the proxy server to establish an HTTP tunnel to the Sysdig collector at collector-your.sysdigcloud.com on port 6443. The agent will authenticate with the proxy server using the given user and password combination.

collector: collector-your.sysdigcloud.com
collector_port: 6443
http_proxy:
  proxy_host: squid.yourdomain.com
  proxy_port: 3128
  proxy_user: sysdig_customer
  proxy_password: 12345
  ssl: true
  ssl_verify_certificate: true
  ca_certificate: /usr/proxy/proxy_cert.crt

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