Do I have to configure SSL certificates files in nginx.conf file behind AWS Application Load Balancer?

Question

I have a configuration in AWS EC2 for HTTPS incoming connections. As I am a newbie to this stuff, I have nginx config which in an old-fashioned way I would edit like this: https://nginx.org/en/docs/http/configuring_https_servers.html .

Though, in AWS EC2 I can add certificates to it and then redirect both 443 and 80 ports connections to, say, port 8000 where my nginx runs as a reverse proxy.

Does nginx still have to have these certificates files locally and their paths added to the config or should traffic be decoded by ELB and sent to nginx decoded?

Answer 1

You don't have to have SSL certificates on EC2 with nginx, if they are setup in ELB and assigned to HTTPS listener. Just make sure the Target Group for your EC2 is of HTTP type with port 8000.

Answer 2

As mentioned before, certificate should be set up on ALB side.
This configuration of Nginx as reverse proxy behind AWS ALB works for me:

server {    
    listen       80;
    listen       443;
    server_name  server_name;


    location / {
                proxy_pass         http://localhost:8000;
                proxy_set_header   Host                 $host;
                proxy_set_header   X-Forwarded-HTTPS    on;
                proxy_set_header   X-Real-IP            $remote_addr;
                proxy_set_header   X-Forwarded-For      $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
                proxy_redirect off;        
    }