Hello all,
I have started experimenting again with a local server and I am facing a few issues, here is my case.
I run Debian o an old HP prebuilt without GUI. I do everything with ssh from my laptop (basic connection ssh user@addr)
I have installed docker. I have installed a few containers. I also installed portainer for easier management.
All good so far because everything is local.
I have purchased a domain with cloudflare and set up a tunnel as to avoid exposing any ports and having an easier time managing and deploying stuff.
I have set up jellyfin and vaultwarden but when I tried to install nextcloud AIO it was advised to add a local reverse proxy as to avoid many problems.
My questions are:
Is the tunnel solution appropriate for jellyfin?
I suppose it’s OK for vaultwarden as there isnt much data being transfered?
Would it be better to run nginx proxy manager for everything or can I run both of the solutions?
Any general recommendations on the above and in general are appreciated!
I haven’t deployed Cloudflare but I’ve deployed Tailscale, which has many similarities to the CF tunnel.
- Is the tunnel solution appropriate for Jellyfin?
I assume you’re talking about speed/performance here. The overhead added by establishing the connection is mostly just once at the connection phase, and it’s not much. In the case of Tailscale there’s additional wireguard encryption overhead for active connections, but it remains fast enough for high-bandwidth video streams. (I download torrents over wireguard, and they download much faster than realtime.) Cloudflare’s solution is only adding encryption in the form of TLS to their edge. Everything these days uses TLS, you don’t have to sweat that performance-wise.
(You might want to sweat a little over the fact that cloudflare terminates TLS itself, meaning your data is transiting its network without encryption. Depending on your use case that might be okay.)
- I suppose it’s OK for vaultwarden as there isnt much data being transfered?
Performance wise, vaultwarden won’t care at all. But please note the above caveat about cloudflare and be sure you really want your vaultwarden TLS terminated by Cloudflare.
- Would it be better to run nginx proxy manager for everything or can I run both of the solutions?
There’s no conflict between the two technologies. A reverse proxy like nginx or caddy can run quite happily inside your network, fronting all of your homelab applications; this is how I do it, with caddy. Think of a reverse proxy as just a special website that branches out to every other website. With that model in mind, the tunnel is providing access to the reverse proxy, which is providing access to everything else on its own. This is what I’m doing with tailscale and caddy.
- General recs
Consider tailscale? Especially if you’re using vaultwarden from outside your home network. There are ways to set it up like cloudflare, but the usual way is to install tailscale on the devices you are going to use to access your network. Either way it’s fully encrypted in transit through tailscale’s network.
Thank you for all of this, but a vpn solution won’t work for me as I run a VPN all the time on all my machines.
Edit: Upon looking a little on tailscale, I might consider it, seems interesting.
if your service has to be public i would recommend getting a switch that can do VLANs and put your server inside it’s own VLAN DMZ so if you get hacked they will be trapped inside the VLAN
Also need a router that allows for VLANS as well. Otherwise you can not access the other network when your home. As you need routing between the VLANS. Or you can use a L3 switch.
I use Nextcloud with Nginx Proxy Manager and just use NPM to handle the reverse proxy, nothing in Nextcloud other than adding the domain to the config so it’s trusted.
I use Plex instead of Jellyfin, but I stream it through NPM with no issues. I can’t speak to the tunnel though, I prefer a simple wireguard tunnel for anything external so I’ve never tried it.
Edit: unless that’s what you mean by tunnel, I was assuming you meant traefik or tailscale or one of the other solutions I see posted more often, but I think one or both of those use wireguard under the hood.
AFAIK, Tailscale has Funnel, which is better than CF tunnels since you can expose any machine you have without buying an expensive switch.
This all sounds like too many levels of hair. If you really want to serve from home and have the upstream bandwidth for it, then reverse proxy to a cheap VPS seems like the easiest approach. I lost interest in that ages ago, partly because of crappy home internet. I have played with the idea of colo’ing a server at a data center but in the end, it’s simpler to use VPS and/or rental dedicated servers, so I do that instead. Whether that counts as self hosting is up to you, I guess.
