I’m sure I’m massively overthinking this, but any help would be greatly appreciated.

I have a domain name that I bought through NameCheap and I’ve pointed it to Cloudflare (i.e. updated the name servers). I have a Synology NAS on which I run Docker and a few containers. Up until now I’ve done this using IP addresses and ports to access everything (I have a Homepage container running and just link to everything from there).

But I want to setup SSL and start running Vaultwarden, hence purchasing a domain name to make it all easier.

I tried creating an A record in Cloudflare to point to the internal IP of my NAS (and obviously, this couldn’t be orange-clouded through CF because it’s internal to my LAN). I’m very reluctant to point the A record to the external IP of my NAS (which, for added headache is dynamic, so I’d need to get some kind of DDNS) because I don’t want to expose everything on my NAS to the Internet. In actual fact, I’m not precious about accessing any of this stuff over the internet - if I need remote access I have a Tailscale container running that I can connect to (more on that later in the post). The domain name was purely for ease of setting up SSL and Vaultwarden.

So I guess my questions are:

  • What is the best way to go about this - do I create a DDNS on the NAS and point that external IP address to my domain in Cloudflare, then use Traefik to just expose the containers I want to have access to using subdomains?
  • If so, then how do I know that all other ports aren’t accessible (I assume because I’m only going to expose ports 80 and 443 in Traefik?)
  • What do other people see (i.e. outside my network) if they go to my domain? How do I ensure they can’t access my NAS and see some kind of page?
  • Is there a benefit to using Cloudflare?
  • How would Pi-hole and local DNS fit into this? I guess I could point my router at Pi-hole for DNS and create my A records on Pi-hole for all my subdomains - but what do I need to setup initially in Cloudflare?
  • I also have a RPi that has a (very basic) website on it - how do I setup an A record to have Cloudflare point a sub-domain to the Pi’s IP address?
  • Going back to the Tailscale thing - is it possible to point the domain to the IP address of the Tailscale container, so that the domain is only accessible when I switch on the Tailscale VPN? Is this a good idea/bad idea? Is there a better way to do it?

I’m sure these are all noob-type questions, but for the past 6-7 years I’ve purely used this internally using IP:port combinations, so never had to worry about domain names and external exposure, etc.

Many thanks in advance!

  • @Double_AEnglish
    2•10 months ago

    Going back to the Tailscale thing - is it possible to point the domain to the IP address of the Tailscale container, so that the domain is only accessible when I switch on the Tailscale VPN? Is this a good idea/bad idea? Is there a better way to do it?

    Yeah that works perfectly. The domain will point to your Tailscale IP, but that IP is not reachable unless you are in the VPN.

    On my box I have a Caddy container with the Cloudflare plugin, that automatically generates Let’s Encrypt certificates. And I can use it to point (sub)domains to certain docker containers. (see: https://caddy.community/t/how-to-guide-caddy-v2-cloudflare-dns-01-via-docker/8007 )

    • schmurnanOPEnglish
      1•10 months ago

      Thanks.

      I guess the issue with this, though, is that I don’t always need to access it via Tailscale - I’d only do that when away from home. Perhaps there’s a way to point a subdomain to the Tailscale IP, and that’s only accessible when Tailscale is active? And then use an alternative subdomain to access it the rest of the time? Is that achievable?