Public IP vs Shared Resolver

Programming is always a question of choice, especially now when the IT sphere offers so many solutions. To succeed, you need to make the right choice while selecting the instances and services for running your application at all the stages of its life-cycle – from development to production. As a result, this influences various factors beginning with performance and the amount of money you need to invest.

Jelastic aims to be beneficial to its users and that’s why we constantly share suggestions on how to be successful using Jelastic services. This time, we’ll pay attention to the option of using Jelastic shared Resolver and Public IP. Below, you can find the specifications of each option and consider all of the pros and cons and as a result make the right choice for you.

Shared resolver

Let’s start with the default Jelastic offering – shared Resolver.

Resolver is an NGINX proxy server between the client side (for example, browser) and your application deployed to the Jelastic Cloud. It processes all incoming requests sent to the domain name ({user_domain}.{hoster_domain}, e.g. my-env.myhoster.com) where the environment entry point (balancer, application server or even database) does not have Public IP attached.

Advantages:

• free usage

Jelastic Resolver is provided for free. This is a great opportunity to save money while developing and testing your application.

• availability by default

Shared Resolver is a default offering of the Jelastic Cloud. You don’t need to make any configurations to enable it. It is available for each user no matter which hosting provider you use or the type of the account you have.

• system high availability

To provide a highly available system, Jelastic uses several synchronized Resolvers for receiving requests simultaneously. As a result, several entry points can be used for the users’ environments at the same time. In such a way, the load is effectively distributed.

Limitations:

• connections limit

To protect your application from DDoS attacks, Resolver is limited to 50 simultaneous connections per the request source address.

• file uploading limitation

Using Jelastic Resolver, you are limited to the size of the files (8 Mb) that can be uploaded to your application.

• risk to be affected

While using shared Resolver, you can address the risk of being affected by other processes (upgrades or other applications which also use it). Jelastic continues to work on improving the Resolver stability, allowing your own separate private solution for processing the requests (Public IP). This is always a better option.

Public IP

For more secure work of your production environments, it is recommended to get and process the requests using Public IP address attached to any instance in the environment with your application.

Jelastic supports IPv4 (Internet Protocol version 4) which is the fourth revision in the development of the Internet Protocol (IP) and the first version of the protocol to be widely deployed.

Using Public IP is a more stable solution with less risk of being affected, as the request is redirected  directly to the entry point.

Advantages:

• custom SSL

Public IP allows you to get the connection secured by means of a Custom SSL feature. This means that the SSL connection can be established for your custom domain names by using your own custom certificates.

• FTP support

With Public IP attached to the environment, you can have the  FTP add-on installed.

• remote access to database

If you attach Public IP address to your database instance, you can work with your databases remotely. You can import and export dumps from your computer without having to login to our dashboard. And, you are not restricted in data size uploading.

• remote debugging

Remote debugging is a pretty useful benefit. You can debug your code right from your IDE.

• WebSockets

Another thing to consider is that Public IP lets you use web-sockets and polling. So, if you open a page with upcoming messages and expect them to be updated as soon as a new message arrives, Public IP is what you need. It is great for interactive applications.

• no risk to be affected

The application cannot be affected within Jelastic upgrades or by other apps, even hypothetically, as all requests will bypass Resolver.

Limitations:

• Public IP is paid

This service is paid. The cost is charged for every hour of use of Public IPv4. The price for one hour is stated by the hoster and you can find it at the dashboard.

• unavailable swap domains feature

If you have Public IP enabled for any node in your environment, you can’t swap domains.

• necessity of manual attaching

To attach Public IP address to any environment instance (except Maven), you need to switch on Public IPv4 in the Environment topology window.

As a result, you can find your Public IP by expanding your environment list and clicking on the additional button for the instance with the added Public IP.

Conclusion

It is recommend to use shared Resolver for your dev and test environments. As for production environments, it is much more appropriate to use your own Public IP as a more secure way of getting and processing the requests.