Remote Administration

[DrexLock]

I'm putting together a FreeNAS Box with two 2Tb disk in a mirror to run Plex for my in-laws. They only live a few streets away but I'm lazy and want to be able to administer and run updates from my house. I know I can setup a dynamic DNS service and port forward to the web UI but I'd rather not open ports in their router if I can avoid it. So I thought I'd pitch it to the community and see if anyone has run into a similar situation and how they tackled it, or if they have a more secure solution.

 

[Mirfster]

VPN, then SSH or just via Web GUI.

 

[DrexLock]

VPN, then SSH or just via Web GUI.

VPN would be my go to for my own house (I already have a OpenVPN Server) . But my in-laws aren't the most Tech Savy and I don't think that they would be too keen on having a second machine running just for their lazy son-in-law to remote connect.

 

[droeders]

VPN would be my go to for my own house (I already have a OpenVPN Server) . But my in-laws aren't the most Tech Savy and I don't think that they would be too keen on having a second machine running just for their lazy son-in-law to remote connect.

Why would you need a second machine? You could setup a VPN server in a jail on the FreeNAS box you're already installing at their house.

For that matter, I'm sure you could also setup a VPN client on their FreeNAS server. This way, you wouldn't need a VPN server on their machine, and you could connect to the VPN server that you already have setup.

 

[danb35]

Or, depending on what they use for their router, it might directly support being a VPN server, or you might be able to flash it with alternate firmware like OpenWRT that does. I'm not a big fan of running it in a jail--I think it properly belongs on the router--but it should work fine in a jail too.

 

[DrexLock]

Why would you need a second machine? You could setup a VPN server in a jail on the FreeNAS box you're already installing at their house.

For that matter, I'm sure you could also setup a VPN client on their FreeNAS server. This way, you wouldn't need a VPN server on their machine, and you could connect to the VPN server that you already have setup.

If I could have there machine maintain a connection to my VPN server without cutting off their local access then that would be perfect. I've never dug that deep into OpenVPN beyond setting up a basic VPN with all my traffic coming back home. I'll have to dig through the forums some more and see how it goes.

Or, depending on what they use for their router, it might directly support being a VPN server, or you might be able to flash it with alternate firmware like OpenWRT that does. I'm not a big fan of running it in a jail--I think it properly belongs on the router--but it should work fine in a jail too.

I'd flash over OpenWRT in a heart beat but we each have FiOS and they are using the Quantum Gateway. I hooked up our own router direct to the ONT box in the garage but they wanted to stay with what Verizon provides :/

 

[Nick2253]

I think the "easy" way would be to set up a jail as your VPN client. You could even force all webgui traffic over this VPN tunnel. Some guides that you might look at are setting up Transmission with OpenVPN; obviously, you won't be using Transmission here, but it should get you a sense of how to handle the traffic management.

 

[toadman]

I agree with Nick2253 on the easy way. Should you not like messing with jails, an alternative would be set up the box as an esxi host (or your preferred virtual host) and set up pfsense or something and let that serve as the VPN server. You can sit the freenas there as a VM behind the pfsense VM. (Assuming of course your MB allows pass through of the drives.) 6 of one, half dozen of the other I suppose.