Question

Potential Firewall Log Impact on Database Operations

Posted on April 24, 2024
DigitalOcean Cloud Firewalls Infrastructure DigitalOcean Droplets
Asked by a18c8eb1471849c38a67f0898471e8

Hi everyone, I’m planning to migrate my SQL Server database to this cloud provider. Our company recently had an issue with a different provider where write operations were locked because that cloud provider had a firewall (it was a separate device) and the logs of the firewall somehow affected the database server (the support team couldn’t provide more information). So, we had to request access to the firewall, delete the logs and restart the database.

My boss said that every VPS (or droplet) includes a firewall (like that cloud provider did) so I came here to ask if this could happen in this platform.

Here’s my question:

Could something similar happen if I buy a Shared Droplet and use it as a database?

Extra information:

That firewall was a separate device, and it was part of the cloud provider, that’s why we had to request access to that firewall to delete the logs.
I believe it was the fault of that other cloud provider, but I still have to ask for completeness.

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Bobby Iliev

Site Moderator

• April 25, 2024

Accepted Answer

Hi there,

DigitalOcean offers Cloud firewalls, but they don’t come automatically with each Droplet unless you explicitly create one and attach it to your Droplet:

https://docs.digitalocean.com/products/networking/firewalls/

The firewall service for Droplets is provided at no additional cost. But you still need to configure it explicitly and attach it to your Droplet.

On another note, with most Linux distributions you do get a software firewall installed such as firewalld or ufw, but this is something that runs on the Droplet itself, and you do have full root access and will be able to manage the firewall rules as you please.

Let me know if you have any questions!

Best,

Bobby

alexdo

Site Moderator

• April 26, 2024

Heya,

UFW is a host-based tool. That is, it has to be configured on each Droplet separately and add the necessary rules manually.

https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-set-up-a-firewall-with-ufw-on-ubuntu

DigitalOcean’s Cloud Firewall is a network-based one. The same firewall rules can be applied on a large number of Droplets. DigitalOcean’s Cloud Firewall has the advantage of scalability. As it supports tagging of the Droplets, we can add custom labels to Droplets.

Regards