Can't get https working on Elastic Load Balancer (AWS)

Question

I have a load balancer in front on an ec2-Classic instance. I have checked that the load balancer is working properly by directly linking to the DNS Name value that is listed in the Description tab for my load balancer. This gives me the main page of the webpage that lies on the EC2 instance. Thus my load balancer is working. My load balancer and my EC2 instance are in the same avalibility zone.

My load balancer has set up an SSL certificate and I have two listeners setup to forward http (port 80) and https (port 443) to instance port 80 as http. My EC2 instance has a security group set to accept http and https with protocol TCP on ports 80 and 443 respectively. Although my understanding is that only the port 80 would be useful, right? The data for the certificate are in the pem format. I have addded to my instance security group a custom TCP on Port Range 0 - 65535 for amazon-elb/amazon-elb-sg. This did nothing.

I can access my site using http just fine. If I try to access using https then I get Error code: ERR_CONNECTION_REFUSED on Chrome and Unable to Connect on Firefox.

I have checked similar posts for this question and nothing seems to help.

Any help or ideas would be greatly appreciated. Thanks

Answer 1

Have you made sure that the ELB is in a security group that allows https on port 443?

Answer 2

I had a similar problem with both classic and advanced load balancer. The thing that was missing for me is that the https to http translation stuff only workers AFTER you make an A record in the DNS for the domain your SSL is on ALIASED to the load balancer you just created. Once I did that all was well through that new A record DNS. Your instance doesn't need to accept port 443 and your LB definitely should not be forwarding over 443.

Hopefully it is something straightforward like this for you as well.

Wait, what SSL certificate in PEM format? I used an Amazon SSL certificate I just got from the dropdown. Are you sure you used an SSL certificate?

Answer 3

In your description I see that maybe you are not following Step 6 from Amazon's "Elastic Load Balancing in Amazon EC2-Classic ->Create HTTPS/SSL Load Balancer Using the AWS Management Console -> Configure Listeners" guide.

There, it says that you should configure "HTTPS (...) in the Load Balancer Protocol [and] HTTPS (Secure HTTP) (...) in the Instance Protocol box.", whereas in your configuration you are forwarding ELB's 443 to port 80 in the instance.

For further reference, this is the guide that I'm talking about DEAD LINKhttp://docs.aws.amazon.com/ElasticLoadBalancing/latest/DeveloperGuide/configure-https-listener.htmlDEAD LINK

Also, check if your SSL certificate is well built according to the rules specified here: http://docs.aws.amazon.com/ElasticLoadBalancing/latest/DeveloperGuide/ssl-server-cert.html