Multiple Proxy Support

The Cloud Agent for MacOS supports multiple proxies defined in proxy URLs and PAC files. These proxies act as a failover option to connect with Qualys Cloud Platform. You can add a maximum of five proxies to a proxy URL or a PAC file.

The Cloud Agent tries the first proxy server in the list, and if it fails to connect with Qualys Cloud Platform, the Cloud Agent switches to the next server. If the connection using all proxies fails, Cloud Agent attempts a direct connection with Qualys Cloud Platform.

You can use the Configuration Tool to set the proxy order to be sequential or random. The agent does not maintain a history of the last proxy server used.

This proxy configuration can be used with the Qualys Gateway Service or third-party proxy servers. It is not required that failover proxy servers must be on the same subnet as that of the first proxy server. The Cloud Agent uses other proxy servers even on other subnets, if it can connect to the Qualys Cloud Platform.

To define the multiple proxies in a proxy URL, use proxy server separated by a semicolon. For PAC files, refer to the PAC file vendor's documentation that defines how to configure multiple proxy servers.

You can configure multiple proxies in the proxy file, as mentioned in the Proxy configuration section.

Multiple proxies can be configured with qualys_https_proxy or https_proxy environment variables. It is recommended that you provide multiple proxies in the qualys_https_proxy environment variable.

The following example shows how to set multiple proxies:

qualys_https_proxy=”https://[<username>:<password>@]<host1>:<port>;
https://[<username>:<password>@]<host2>:<port>; https://[<username>:<password>@]<host3>:<port>”

Enclose the list of proxy servers in double quotes (“...”), separated by a semi-colon (;). If ";" is embedded in the username/password, you must url-encode it. You can encrypt the username and password using the Proxy Configuration Encryption Utility.

You can combine multiple proxy certificates into a single file and place it at the same location as earlier

/Applications/QualysCloudAgent.app/Contents/Config/cert/ca-bundle.crt.

Ensure that all certificates are valid or you might get SSL/certificate errors.