heroku-buildpack-redis-cloud

by HireFrederick

GitHub Readme.md

Heroku buildpack: Redis Cloud SSL

This is a Heroku buildpack that allows an application to use an stunnel to connect securely to Redis instances using client certificate authentication. It is meant to be used in conjunction with other buildpacks.

This buildpack contains only small changes from the base Heroku Redis Buildpack

  • The goal of this fork is to make the changes necessary to provide a similar experience when using Redis services besides Heroku Redis, specifically Redis Cloud.
  • To use this buildback, you must have a plan that allows SSL to be enabled using stunnel and client certificates.

Usage

First you need to set this buildpack as your initial buildpack with:

$ heroku buildpacks:add -i 1 https://github.com/HireFrederick/heroku-buildpack-redis-cloud.git

Then confirm you are using this buildpack as well as your language buildpack like so:

$ heroku buildpacks
=== frozen-potato-95352 Buildpack URLs
1. https://github.com/HireFrederick/heroku-buildpack-redis-cloud.git
2. heroku/python

For more information on using multiple buildpacks check out this devcenter article.

Enable SSL on your Redis resource

For Redis Cloud follow the top part of these instructions to enable ssl

  • You will need a client certificate, private key, and CA cert to configure your app vars (see below)
  • If migrating an existing production application from non-ssl to SSL, you may want to configure your app vars ahead of time with ENABLE_STUNNEL=false, then push your new Procfile and switch ENABLE_STUNNEL=true at the moment you enable SSL on the Redis resource. Redis Cloud does not allow instances to operate in mixed mode, so before you flip to SSL, be ready.

Configuration

The buildpack will install and configure stunnel to connect to REDIS_CLOUD_URL by default. Prepend bin/start-stunnel to any process in the Procfile to run stunnel alongside that process.

Some settings are configurable through app config vars at runtime:

  • STUNNEL_CERT: Paste in the client certificate to use for connecting to Redis Cloud. This is the same certificate used when configuring the redis instance for SSL
  • STUNNEL_KEY: Paste in the private key for the client certificate. If you had Redis Cloud generate your cert, this key is in the zip file.
  • STUNNEL_CA: Paste in the certificate CA. If you had Redis Cloud generate the cert, this is also in the zip file provided.
  • STUNNEL_ENABLED: Defaults to true, set to false to disable stunnel.
  • STUNNEL_FORCE_TLS: Default is unset. Set this var, to force TLSv1 on cedar-10.
  • REDIS_STUNNEL_URLS: Use this to specify for which Redis URLs (environment variables) to activate the SSL tunnel. For instance, $ heroku config:add REDIS_STUNNEL_URLS="CACHE_URL SESSION_STORE_URL" to specify two redis instances with URLS set to CACHE_URL and SESSION_STORE_URL vars.

STUNNEL_CERT, STUNNEL_KEY, and STUNNEL_CA are required.

Update your Procfile

For each process that should connect to Redis securely, you will need to preface the command in your Procfile with bin/start-stunnel.

$ cat Procfile
web:    bin/start-stunnel bundle exec unicorn -p $PORT -c ./config/unicorn.rb -E $RACK_ENV
worker: bin/start-stunnel bundle exec sidekiq

We're then ready to deploy to Heroku with an encrypted connection between the dynos and Redis:

$ git push heroku master
...
-----> Fetching custom git buildpack... done
-----> Multipack app detected
=====> Downloading Buildpack: https://github.com/HireFrederick/heroku-buildpack-redis-cloud.git
=====> Detected Framework: stunnel
       Using stunnel version: 5.02
       Using stack version: cedar
-----> Fetching and vendoring stunnel into slug
-----> Moving the configuration generation script into app/bin
-----> Moving the start-stunnel script into app/bin
-----> stunnel done
=====> Downloading Buildpack: https://github.com/heroku/heroku-buildpack-ruby.git
=====> Detected Framework: Ruby/Rack
-----> Using Ruby version: ruby-2.2.2
-----> Installing dependencies using Bundler version 1.7.12
...

One-off dynos

Through an additional executable in this buildpack it is possible to run one-off dynos with secure Redis access. Simply prepend bin/run-stunnel to all your one-off tasks and scheduled jobs, such as:

$ heroku run bin/run-stunnel rails c