SUPPORTThis article describes how you can allow access to a hosted Shotgun site while meeting the internet restriction policies in place at your studio.
Scope and assumptions
This document is intended for the System and Shotgun Administrator.
It is assumed that the reader has basic knowledge about proxy, networking, and HTTP protocols.
Using a gateway server to access Shotgun in the cloud
A gateway server allows users to have access to their hosted Shotgun site, without having access to the rest of the internet. It forwards filtered requests to Shotgun end-points, but blocks all the other requests. This means that when a user requests *.shotgunstudio.com, the request will go through. But if a user requests an unauthorized site, the request will not go through.
Why use a gateway server?
- You want to isolate your network from the Internet, while still allowing your users to access your Shotgun Hosted instance;
- You want to connect to Shotgun using deprecated connection/encryption protocols (DO THIS AT YOUR OWN RISKS).
We recommend you use a gateway server instead of setting up a proxy server for Shotgun. With a gateway server:
- You don’t have to deal with whitelisting complex IP ranges that can change over time;
- You can still benefit from all the Web Acceleration features included in each Shotgun Hosted Site;
- You will see better performance with Amazon S3 compared to the S3 proxy solution;
- You will see better performance with all playback and all uploads, compared to the S3 proxy solution.
Getting started
There are three main steps to put in place a gateway server.
- Put in place a split horizon Domain Name System (DNS).
- Set up the gateway server using HAProxy.
- Configure the users environment to use your gateway.
Step 0: Getting ready
In order to correctly configure the gateway server, you will need the following information:
- Your site name (<your_site_name>.shotgunstudio.com)
- The name of your particular media bucket, which is based on your regional zone to optimize performance. See this article for information about how to get this information: https://support.shotgunsoftware.com/hc/en-us/articles/115000022554-Selecting-a-storage-location-for-uploaded-files-overview. If you have problems figuring out this information, please contact Shotgun Support.
- Two distinct internal IP addresses are assigned to the gateway server: one to listen on <your_site_name>.shotgunstudio.com and one to listen on the S3 url. A third IP may be required if you are using Toolkit. The range of the IP addresses depends on how the network at your studio is set-up.
Step 1: Split horizon DNS
Split horizon DNS allows for giving a different answer to a query (in this case, URL resolving) depending on the source of the query. Your split horizon DNS would, for people in your studio, resolve your Shotgun URL to an internal IP address (the gateway server) instead of resolving to Shotgun Public IPs.
The gateway server will forward all requests to the Shotgun IPs. The gateway server can have unrestricted access to make requests out to the internet, but all Artists will see is the internal server, limiting access to Shotgun Internet Resources only.
Setting up a DNS in such a configuration requires some basic IT skills. Here are some example of how to set it up:
- http://jensd.be/160/linux/split-horizon-dns-masterslave-with-bind
- Appendix 1 at the end of that article
If you don't already have a DNS server, you will want to order or dedicate a server to the task. The example in this article are for Linux systems.
Step 2: Configure HAProxy as a Shotgun Gateway
For implementing the gateway server, we suggest you use HAProxy. HAProxy is a reliable, simple and high performance TCP/HTTP load balancer that would allow you to implement the gateway easily. We recommend using at least version 1.6.
You will find in the Appendix 2 an example of an HAProxy configuration file.
Step 3: Configure your users' environment
|
For all users |
Update your router or your user's machine to advertise the new DNS server. |
|
For browser users |
Add the certificate authority to your keychain or Chrome will complain about unsafe certificates |
|
For Python API users |
Add the certificate authority to your keychain or set SHOTGUN_API_CACERTS |
|
For REST API users |
Add the certificate authority to your keychain or pass it down to requests or the library you are using |
| Toolkit users | Add the certificate authority to your keychain or set SHOTGUN_API_CACERTS |
| Things to look into | toolkit.ini could have a shogun_api_cacerts setting so there would be no need for an env var. |
Additional things to look into:
- toolkit.ini could have a shogun_api_cacerts setting so there would be no need for an env var.
Follow up steps
IP access restriction by your Shotgun site
If you set up a gateway server, you probably want your Shotgun site to only accept requests coming from your studio IPs. See "IP Whitelisting" on Shotgun Help Center for more details.
FAQ
Will the gateway server complexify an Artist’s setup?
No, the gateway server will not change an Artist’s internet access. If Artists are currently allowed to browse certain sites in a restricted way, they will still be able to do so. From an Artist’s perspective, the change will be imperceptible.
All URLs will continue to work as before. The same is true for emails, and URLs in Shotgun-generated emails.
Will the gateway server affect the speed of my site?
No, you will see the same speeds as direct access. You may even see faster speeds due to connection caching by the gateway.
Can I monitor what is forwarded?
Yes, you can log all traffic routed through the forwarding agent. It is possible to monitor the activity from an external angle, and track which IPs are using Shotgun, how many requests are made, etc. However, because the traffic is encrypted over HTTPS, the content of the requests will be encrypted.
Will my other tools work with the gateway server?
Yes, all other tools will continue to work. This includes Toolkit, the Shotgun API, RV, etc.
Why does tank.shotgunstudio.com also need to be forwarded?
Tank.shotgunstudio.com is the Toolkit App Store. Toolkit can operate without it, but calls to that site must also be forwarded for Toolkit updates to succeed.
Appendix 1 - Split horizon DNS (Ubuntu)
The following steps have been done on Debian. Steps and location of configuration files might be different for different platforms.
sudo apt-get install bind9
Open /etc/bind/named.conf and configure named. Below is a minimal DNS configuration file for bind9
options {
directory "/var/cache/bind";
# tells the dns that zones it doesn't understand should be handled by another DNS
forwarders {
8.8.8.8; # Google's DNS.
//you can add here other DNS servers
};
dnssec-validation auto;
auth-nxdomain no; # conform to RFC1035
listen-on-v6 { any; };
};
logging {
channel bind.query.log {
file "/var/log/dns.query.log";
print-time yes;
severity debug 3;
};
category queries { bind.query.log; };
};
# Defines a zone we want to answer DNS query for
zone "shotgunstudio.com" {
type master;
file "/etc/bind/db.shotgunstudio.com";
};
Open /etc/bind/db.shotgunstudio.com and paste this minimal configuration file for the bind9 zone for shotgunstudio.com (replace mysite with your studio URL):
$TTL 1
# This is the SOA header. I lifted this from somewhere and put very small TTL
@ IN SOA ns.shotgunstudio.com. root.shotgunstudio.com. (
4 ; Serial
5 ; Refresh
5 ; Retry
5 ; Expire
5 ) ; Negative Cache TTL
@ IN NS ns.shotgunstudio.com.
ns.shotgunstudio.com. IN A 192.168.1.174 ;A Server IP...
# This is where we are mapping our internal site to our HAProxy server address
mysite.shotgunstudio.com. IN A 192.168.1.174 ;Another Server IP
Appendix 2 - Configure HAProxy as a gateway
Install haproxy. Docker users can use the latest version of the haproxy:alpine container: https://hub.docker.com/_/haproxy/
apt-get install haproxy
Open /etc/haproxy/haproxy.cfg and configure haproxy. Below is a configuration example for haproxy 1.6. Replace the part between <> with your own information, including the <> symbols.
global maxconn 4096 pidfile /tmp/haproxy-queue.pid defaults log global timeout connect 300000 timeout client 300000 timeout server 300000
# handle external ip changes
resolvers external_dns
nameserver dns1 <external_dns_ip>:53
resolve_retries 3
timeout retry 1s
hold valid 10s # in case someone enters SG address without https listen http_redirect
bind <internal_ip_address_1>:80 mode http redirect scheme https code 301 if !{ ssl_fc } listen shotgun_proxy
bind <internal_ip_address_1>:443 mode tcp server app1 <your_site_name>.shotgunstudio.com:443 listen shotgun_s3_proxy
bind <internal_ip_address_2>:443 mode tcp server app1 sg-media-usor-01.s3-accelerate.amazonaws.com:443
listen shotgun_tank_proxy
bind <internal_ip_address_3>:443
mode tcp
server app1 tank.shotgunstudio.com:443
Start the service
sudo service haproxy start
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