docker-tcp-proxy

Simple TCP Proxy in a Docker Container using HAproxy

Why?

Sometimes you may need to forward a TCP connection and don't want to setup IPTables or a complicated application proxy. This container was originally created to route Redis requests to an AWS Elasticache backend from a network that did not have access to the VPC elasticache was configured in.

AWS documentation recommends setting up a NAT instance with iptable rules. This container makes it possible to setup a simple HAproxy configuration that proxies requests instead.

Usage

Environment Variables

When running the container two Environment Variables are required

• BACKEND_HOST
  • IP or hostname to proxy connections to
• BACKEND_PORT
  • The port number to proxy connections to. This is also the port the container listens on.

Building the Container

docker build -t docker-tcp-proxy .

Running the Container

The following example forward TCP requests on port 6379 to an Elasticache instance on my-elasticache.domain.com:6379

docker run -it -p 6379:6379 --rm -e "BACKEND_HOST=my-elasticache.domain.com" -e "BACKEND_PORT=6379 docker-tcp-proxy

Deploying to Rancher

This repository contains a compose file to deploy a Redis proxy to a Rancher cluster. By default it listens on port 23201.

Environment File

Create the environment .env.export file with the BACKEND_HOST and BACKEND_PORT values,

BACKEND_HOST=redis.your-domain.com
BACKEND_PORT=6379

Deploying

Deploy the container to Rancher with rancher-compose

rancher-compose --file redis-tcp-proxy.yml \
                --env-file .env.export \
                --project-name redis-proxy \
                up \
                --force-upgrade \
                --confirm-upgrade \
                --pull \
                -d