We are experiencing very high CPU load caused by tinc [0], which we use to ensure all communication between cloud VMs is encrypted. This is primarily affecting the highest traffic VMs, including the one hosting the master DB.
I am starting to consider alternative tools such us wireguard to reduce load, but I am concerned of adding too much complexity. Tinc's mesh network makes setup and maintenance easy. The wireguard ecosystem seems to be growing very quickly, and it's possible to find tools that aim to simplify its deployment, but it's hard to see which of these tools are here to stay, and which will be replaced in a few months.
What is the best practice, in 2021, to ensure all communication between cloud VMs (even in a private network) is encrypted?
Apart from some smaller projects building on top of WireGuard, there's Tailscale [1]. One of the founders is Brad Fitzpatrick who worked on the Go team at Google before and built memcached and perkeep in the past.
Outside of the WireGuard ecosystem there's ZeroTier [2] which has been around for a while and they're working on a new version; and Nebula [3] from Slack, which is likely to be maintained as long as Slack uses it.
There might be others, but with tinc these four are the ones I've seen referred to most often.
+1 for Tailscale, the product is great. I've used it in a very limited scale but can vouch for quality and performance. No CPU issues at all (even on rPi).
Similar to Tailscale is the Innernet project, which has similar goals but is fully open source (also built on Wireguard). I've heard that set-up is a bit more painful, but for those who are interested in FOSS or self-hosting, it might be worth looking into.
I am starting to consider alternative tools such us wireguard to reduce load, but I am concerned of adding too much complexity. Tinc's mesh network makes setup and maintenance easy. The wireguard ecosystem seems to be growing very quickly, and it's possible to find tools that aim to simplify its deployment, but it's hard to see which of these tools are here to stay, and which will be replaced in a few months.
What is the best practice, in 2021, to ensure all communication between cloud VMs (even in a private network) is encrypted?
[0]https://www.tinc-vpn.org/