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!

  • schmurnanOPEnglish
    1•10 months ago

    Thanks, I’d like to know more about how to go about this approach.

    I guess in my head, I want to achieve the following (however I go about it):

    • Access https://mydomain.com from outside my network and hit some kind of blank page that wouldn’t necessarily suggest to the public that anything exists here
    • Access https://mydomain.com from inside my network and hit a login page of some kind (Authelia or otherwise), to then gain access to the Homepage container running in Docker (essentially a dashboard to all my services)
    • Access https://secure.mydomain.com from outside my network and route through to the same as above, only this would be via the Tailscale IP address/container running on my stack to allow for remote access
    • Route all HTTP requests to HTTPS
    • Use the added protection that Cloudflare brings (orange clouds where possible)
    • SSL certificates for all services
    • Ability to turn up extra Docker containers and auto-obtain SSL certs for them Ensure that everything else on my NAS and network is secure/inaccessible other than the services I expose through Traefik.

    I have no idea where Cloudflare factors in (if at all), nor how Pi-hole factors in (if at all).

    Internal stuff I’ve been absolutely fine with. Stick a domain name, a reverse proxy and DNS in front of me and it’s like I’m learning how to code a Hello World app all over again.