Getting Started
Introduction
SafeSquid is an RFC 2616 compliant HTTP/1.1 proxy server, specially designed to provide maximum protocol, and payload security.
SafeSquid based Secure Web Gateways enable your users to safely access the web.
SafeSquid, when setup in Reverse Proxy mode, secures your web applications.
SafeSquid is a highly scalable software, that enables scaling up by increasing the hardware provisioning, or scaling out by creating an application cluster.
While the installable packages for both these platforms are different for obvious reasons, the configuration and operation is quite identical. So you can choose platform of your choice, to host SafeSquid Proxy Service. Yes, the advantages of deploying SafeSquid on Linux are overall higher because the Linux operating system is better suited for servers. But then if you are more comfortable with Microsoft®Windows, you can happily deploy on Windows. Migration from either of the platforms to the other is not very difficult, really!
System Requisites
Use SafeSquid Appliance Builder (SAB) to setup your secure web gateway. SAB is an Ubuntu Linux operating system ISO, customized to provide automatic setup of all the necessary files and services. SAB enables you to transform a standard Intel® hardware architecture for servers, into a hardware web security appliance, or a setup a virtual appliance on any virtualization infrastructure like VmWare® or Microsoft Hyper-V®.
Use the SafeSquid installation packages (tar.gz) if you wish to setup secure web gateway on other Linux distributions like RedHat®, SuSe®, CentOS®, etc.
Use Windows installer package to setup SafeSquid on a Microsoft Windows system.
Hardware Requirements
Minimal Hardware
- RAM: 4 GB
- CPU: 4 Core
- HDD: 160 GB (Depending upon the number of logs and database you want to keep)
Recommended Hardware
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The above specified Minimal Hardware should enable you to do a functional setup of SafeSquid.
However provisioning it for active servicing a platform with atleast 8 CPU cores, and 8GB RAM should be a great starting point. -
SafeSquid is SMP-aware, enabling seamless scale-up by increasing CPU cores, RAM and NIC.
As a thumb rule for server sizing add 2 CPU cores and 4GB RAM per 100 concurrent connections. -
If you intend to use SafeSquid's HTTPS Inspection feature, using processors with "AES-NI", is recommended.
How to find out AES-NI (Advanced Encryption) Enabled on Linux System - SafeSquid is cluster-ready.
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You may thus scale-out by adding nodes to your cluster.
A clustered setup would give you the advantage of both load‑balanced throughput as well as high‑availability service.
| CPU (cores) | RAM (GB) | HDD | Max Concurrent Connections | Approx Users |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 4 | 8 | 500GB | 100 | 25 |
| 4 | 16 | 1TB | 500 | 150 |
| 8 | 16 | 2TB | 1000 | 350 |
| 8 | 32 | 4TB | 1500 | 600 |
| 16 | 32 | 4TB | 2000 | 1000 |
| 16 | 64 | 8TB | 3000 | 1500 |
Installation and Activation
Get Product Activation Key
Before downloading the SafeSquid installer(s), you MUST register to create your account on SafeSquid's self-service portal at - https://key.safesquid.com/. Registration is free, and requires just a few minutes. Your registered account also provides the management of SafeSquid's cloud-backed features, like Custom Web Categorization, VPN support, Configuration Backup, Subscription management, etc.
All registered users are provided with a Product Activation Key. After the actual installation, you must upload this activation key via SafeSquid's Browser based Interface. Your users may not be able to access the web until then. Use the same Activation Key across all your instances of SafeSquid, to ensure easy replication of policies, and other common aspects.
Read more about Registration Process for https://key.safesquid.com
Download Installation Package
SafeSquid Appliance Builder
SafeSquid Appliance Builder (SAB) is the most recommended installer. You may download it using the link displayed when you log into your registered account. Alternatively you may download it from - https://downloads.safesquid.com/appliance/safesquid.iso . SAB is a customized version of Ubuntu 18.04 x86_64 minimal iso. You may create a virtual appliance using the SAB iso on any virtualization infrastructure, or boot a standard Intel Server hardware to create a hardware appliance.
Read more about Setup Your Secure Web Gateway With SafeSquid Appliance Builder
Legacy SafeSquid for Linux
Read more about Setup Your Secure Web Gateway on your preferred Linux distribution
Activate your Product
Before you start accessing the web via SafeSquid you must activate it. Read more about How to Activate a SafeSquid Instance
Basic Setup
If you plan to use HTTPS inspection, then you must first configure HTTPS inspection
Integration of SafeSquid Proxy Service with your Microsoft Active Directory, or OpenLDAP service, would be the most recommended immediate next step.
The How To section could provide you with a fair idea of the rest of the goals that you may want to achieve.