thesabear
12e69acde7
Names real technology throughout (Vault, Authentik, pfSense, firewalld, Wazuh) instead of staying generic, adds a 'why this approach vs the alternative' section to every doc, cross-links heavily between docs instead of treating each system in isolation.
83 lines
4.0 KiB
Markdown
83 lines
4.0 KiB
Markdown
# 📐 Architecture Overview
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> [!NOTE]
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> The stable, directional laws governing how traffic moves through the fleet — eight distinct traffic categories (ingress, east-west, secrets, DNS, observability, notifications, CI/CD, management), each with its own routing authority and its own failure behavior.
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## Dependency graph
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```mermaid
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flowchart TD
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Internet(["Internet"]) --> Edge["Edge Firewall<br/>NAT · public reverse proxy · NTP · DHCP"]
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Edge --> LAN["LAN"]
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LAN --> DNS["Internal DNS"]
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LAN --> Vault["Vault"]
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DNS --> Vault
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Vault --> Apps["App Host<br/>~40 stacks"]
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LAN --> FileServer["File Server"]
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DNS --> FileServer
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Vault --> Automation["Automation Host"]
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LAN --> Automation
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Apps --> InternalProxy["Internal reverse-proxy zone"]
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Apps --> SSO["SSO"]
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Automation --> Gitea["Git hosting<br/>internal + public mirror"]
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Vault --> EdgeProxy["User-facing reverse proxy<br/>mTLS"]
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DNS --> EdgeProxy
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Apps -.proxied by.-> EdgeProxy
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SSO -.auth gate via.-> EdgeProxy
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Apps -.reports to.-> Monitoring["Monitoring"]
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Automation -.reports to.-> Monitoring
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FileServer -.reports to.-> Monitoring
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EdgeProxy -.reports to.-> Monitoring
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Vault -.reports to.-> Monitoring
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DNS -.reports to.-> Monitoring
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Apps -.reports to.-> Wazuh["Security Monitoring"]
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Automation -.reports to.-> Wazuh
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FileServer -.reports to.-> Wazuh
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EdgeProxy -.reports to.-> Wazuh
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Vault -.reports to.-> Wazuh
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DNS -.reports to.-> Wazuh
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```
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## Four trust boundaries, not two
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```mermaid
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flowchart LR
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WAN["WAN"] -->|public application boundary| EdgeFW["Edge Firewall / public proxy"]
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Browser["LAN browsers"] -->|mTLS + SSO| UserProxy["User-facing proxy"]
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Service["App-to-app"] -->|IP-allowlist + SSO| InternalProxy["Internal proxy"]
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Infra["LAN infra-to-infra"] -->|explicit per-flow rules| HostFW["Host firewall rules"]
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```
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Backend services trust proxy headers, not raw client IP, on every path.
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## Two structurally independent traffic planes
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| Plane | Path |
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|---|---|
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| **Ingress — public** | Client → edge firewall/proxy → backend |
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| **Ingress — LAN-facing** | Client → user-facing proxy (mTLS) → backend |
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| **East-west — app-to-app** | Service → internal proxy zone → service |
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| **East-west — infra-to-infra** | Service → firewall rule → service, direct, no proxy |
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> [!IMPORTANT]
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> **Observability sits outside every request path on purpose.** Logs and metrics push asynchronously to monitoring infrastructure; nothing in that pipeline is inline with application traffic, and application services don't depend on monitoring availability. If monitoring goes down, collection stops — nothing else does.
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## Two real architecture changes, not a static design
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> [!IMPORTANT]
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> This shape isn't how the fleet started — it's evolved twice, deliberately. The public-facing reverse proxy used to run as its own dedicated VM; it was consolidated directly onto the edge firewall as a package instead, removing an entire host from the public-ingress path without losing any functionality — one less thing that can fail, one less thing to patch and monitor independently. And the internal service-to-service model used to be a flat, unauthenticated mesh network; it was fully replaced by the two-zone split in [`docs/dns-naming.md`](dns-naming.md), trading a simpler-but-weaker model for one with a real trust boundary between browser-facing and app-to-app traffic. Both changes reduced the attack surface at the cost of more moving parts to reason about — a tradeoff made deliberately, not stumbled into.
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## What this map deliberately excludes
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Not a firewall rule listing, not a port inventory, not a service configuration reference — those live in their own docs ([`docs/firewall-and-network.md`](firewall-and-network.md) and elsewhere). This is strictly the stable, directional shape of how trust and traffic actually move.
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---
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Related: [`docs/firewall-and-network.md`](firewall-and-network.md), [`docs/dns-naming.md`](dns-naming.md)
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