Using a VPN to get a static IP on Heroku

Question

I need to connect to an API with my Heroku/Rails app where I need to have a static IP.

I know about the add-on proximo - https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/proximo - but it is insanely priced, so that's out of the question.

Most people in my situation ends up deploying to EC2 instead and using a an Elastic IP as their static IP. I've also tried this and it works, but I find the whole flow of playing around with EC2 really cumbersome.

I've read in some answers that it is possible to set up an EC2 server and use it as a proxy for your Heroku/Rails app - Heroku Static IP for SFTP - but it sounds very cryptic for a person who is not very server-savvy.

Can someone give a step-to-step tutorial on how to set up your Heroku/Rails app to use your EC2 instance as a proxy?

Answer 1

In short: I would just switch to AWS. There is a little bit of a learning curve but it's not too difficult. Here is a presentation I gave on it geared toward front-end devs: https://speakerdeck.com/krunkosaurus/intro-to-scaling-your-web-app-on-the-cloud-with-aws-for-frontend-developers-part-1

Amazon has 9 regions each with 3-5 "Availability Zones". I know that Heroku uses AWS but am not sure if you get to decide (or know) which AWS region and AZ your actual server is hosted.

Whatever it is, you should host your proxy server in the same Region (better yet, even the same Availability Zone). Setting up an EC2 there is easy just use the web console and be sure to give it an Elastic IP so the adress doesn't ever change. Then point your DNS away from your Heroku instance (dyno?) to this EC2 instance. From there you can either install Nginx or HAProxy.