IIS 7 ARR Reverse Proxy Over https

Question

I have a very simple reverse proxy setup in IIS7 using ARR and rewrite module that takes all traffic on an IP and routes it to a different IP running on a different server.

            <rule name="ReverseProxyInboundRule1" stopProcessing="true">
                <match url="(.*)" />
                <conditions>
                    <add input="{CACHE_URL}" pattern="^(https?)://" />
                </conditions>
                <action type="Rewrite" url="{C:1}://1.1.1.1/{R:1}" />
            </rule>

This all works fine for http:80 however it does not work for HTTPS:443 traffic. There is an SSL cert setup on the destination server but not on the proxy server. Is there a way to get this to work without installing the SSL cert on the proxy server?

Solution

Without the SSL on the proxy, your ARR server won't even be able to read the request headers, including the HOST and the URL requested. It could only blindly redirect all traffic to the web tier servers. Check out Won Yoo's blog post regarding ARR & SSL Offloading (and not offloading). The guy wrote ARR. http://blogs.iis.net/wonyoo/archive/2008/07/10/ssl-off-loading-in-application-request-routing.aspx