Workspace Proxies

Workspace proxies provide low-latency experiences for geo-distributed teams.

Coder's networking does a best effort to make direct connections to a workspace. In situations where this is not possible, such as connections via the web terminal and web IDEs, workspace proxies are able to reduce the amount of distance the network traffic needs to travel.

A workspace proxy is a relay connection a developer can choose to use when connecting with their workspace over SSH, a workspace app, port forwarding, etc. Dashboard connections and API calls (e.g. the workspaces list) are not served over workspace proxies.

Each workspace proxy should be a unique instance. At no point should 2 workspace proxy instances share the same authentication token. They only require port 443 to be open and are expected to have network connectivity to the coderd dashboard. Workspace proxies do not make any database connections.

Workspace proxies can be used in the browser by navigating to the user Account -> Workspace Proxy

Requirements

• The Coder CLI must be installed and authenticated as a user with the Owner role.

Step 1: Create the proxy

Create the workspace proxy and make sure to save the returned authentication token for said proxy. This is the token the workspace proxy will use to authenticate back to primary coderd.

$ coder wsproxy create --name=newyork --display-name="USA East" --icon="/emojis/2194.png"
Workspace Proxy "newyork" created successfully. Save this token, it will not be shown again.
Token: 2fb6500b-bb47-4783-a0db-dedde895b865:05271b4ef9432bac14c02b3c56b5a2d7f05453718a1f85ba7e772c0a096c7175

To verify it was created.

$ coder wsproxy ls
NAME         URL                    STATUS STATUS
newyork                             unregistered

Step 2: Deploy the proxy

Deploying the workspace proxy will also register the proxy with coderd and make the workspace proxy usable. If the proxy deployment is successful, coder wsproxy ls will show an ok status code:

$ coder wsproxy ls
NAME              URL                         STATUS STATUS
primary           https://dev.coder.com        ok
brazil-saopaulo   https://brazil.example.com   ok
europe-frankfurt  https://europe.example.com   ok
sydney            https://sydney.example.com   ok

Other Status codes:

• unregistered : The workspace proxy was created, and not yet deployed
• unreachable : The workspace proxy was registered, but is not responding. Likely the proxy went offline.
• unhealthy : The workspace proxy is reachable, but has some issue that is preventing the proxy from being used. coder wsproxy ls should show the error message.
• ok : The workspace proxy is healthy and working properly!

Configuration

Workspace proxy configuration overlaps with a subset of the coderd configuration. To see the full list of configuration options: coder wsproxy server --help

# Proxy specific configuration. These are REQUIRED
# Example: https://coderd.example.com
CODER_PRIMARY_ACCESS_URL="https://<url_of_coderd_dashboard>"
CODER_PROXY_SESSION_TOKEN="<session_token_from_proxy_create>"

# Runtime variables for "coder start".
CODER_HTTP_ADDRESS=0.0.0.0:80
CODER_TLS_ADDRESS=0.0.0.0:443
# Example: https://east.coderd.example.com
CODER_ACCESS_URL="https://<access_url_of_proxy>"
# Example: *.east.coderd.example.com
CODER_WILDCARD_ACCESS_URL="*.<app_hostname_of_proxy>"

CODER_TLS_ENABLE=true
CODER_TLS_CLIENT_AUTH=none
CODER_TLS_CERT_FILE="<cert_file_location>"
CODER_TLS_KEY_FILE="<key_file_location>"

# Additional configuration options are available.

Running on Kubernetes

Make a values-wsproxy.yaml with the workspace proxy configuration:

Notice the workspaceProxy configuration which is false by default in the coder Helm chart.

coder:
  env:
    - name: CODER_PRIMARY_ACCESS_URL
      value: "https://<url_of_coderd_dashboard>"
    - name: CODER_PROXY_SESSION_TOKEN
      value: "<session_token_from_proxy_create>"
    # Example: https://east.coderd.example.com
    - name: CODER_ACCESS_URL
      value: "https://<access_url_of_proxy>"
    # Example: *.east.coderd.example.com
    - name: CODER_WILDCARD_ACCESS_URL
      value: "*.<app_hostname_of_proxy>"

  tls:
    secretNames:
      - kubernetes-wsproxy-secret

  # enable workspace proxy
  workspaceProxy: true

Using Helm, install the workspace proxy chart

helm install coder coder-v2/coder --namespace <your workspace proxy namespace> -f ./values-wsproxy.yaml

Test that the workspace proxy is reachable with curl -vvv. If for some reason, the Coder dashboard still shows the workspace proxy is UNHEALTHY, scale down and up the deployment's replicas.

Running on a VM

# Set configuration options via environment variables, a config file, or cmd flags
coder wsproxy server

Running as a system service

If you've installed Coder via a system package, you can configure the workspace proxy by settings in /etc/coder.d/coder-workspace-proxy.env

To run workspace proxy as a system service on the host:

# Use systemd to start workspace proxy now and on reboot
sudo systemctl enable --now coder-workspace-proxy

# View the logs to ensure a successful start
journalctl -u coder-workspace-proxy.service -b

To restart workspace proxy after applying system changes:

sudo systemctl restart coder-workspace-proxy

Running in Docker

Modify the default entrypoint to run a workspace proxy server instead of a regular Coder server.

Docker Compose

Change the provided docker-compose.yml file to include a custom entrypoint:

  image: ghcr.io/coder/coder:${CODER_VERSION:-latest}
+ entrypoint: /opt/coder wsproxy server

Docker run

docker run --rm -it --entrypoint /opt/coder ghcr.io/coder/coder:latest wsproxy server

Custom Dockerfile

FROM ghcr.io/coder/coder:latest
ENTRYPOINT ["/opt/coder", "wsproxy", "server"]

Selecting a proxy

Users can select a workspace proxy at the top-right of the browser-based Coder dashboard. Workspace proxy preferences are cached by the web browser. If a proxy goes offline, the session will fall back to the primary proxy. This could take up to 60 seconds.

Observability

Coder workspace proxy exports metrics via the HTTP endpoint, which can be enabled using either the environment variable CODER_PROMETHEUS_ENABLE or the flag --prometheus-enable.

The Prometheus endpoint address is http://localhost:2112/ by default. You can use either the environment variable CODER_PROMETHEUS_ADDRESS or the flag --prometheus-address <network-interface>:<port> to select a different listen address.