I’m just looking for a Google ‘keyword’ to point me in the right direction for some research.
I’m looking to connect a home server with a remote server. I have a VPS server with rackspace, and I need to connect it with a home server so they can communicate. Unfortunately I am not able to get static IP address on my home server (I’m in Northern Alberta and cannot get one from a provider).
The remote server will create files on my local server and then after being processed my local server will update a DB on my remote server. My remote server has a dedicated IP address with DNS hosting, so that’s not a problem at all.
My problem is, I cannot provide DNS hosting on my local server as the IP address is dynamic…
Would OpenVPN or something similiar be able to keep a permanent open connection? Both are running Debian (Lenny) and I have full root access.
Is there a different service I should be considering? Or what processes would I be using? (so I can google some information).
The solution should have the ability to reconnect itself on a server restart (from either end). I’m thinking that a client-side service would be required on the local server as it will always be able to find the remote server (because of it’s dedicated IP address).
You can provide a DNS entry to your home server via a service like dyndns.org - running a small app at home will allow your remote server to chase your home one over the internet.
The other option, is to get your home PC to open up a VPN to your remote server and all communication happen over that?
Personally, I’d build this so the client (your “local” server in this case) can open a connection and grab the files from the remote server as well as push updates to it. This keeps you out of needing things to tunnel into your house.
If you need something to tunnel in and modify the file system, you should definitely think of a VPN.
Finally, most home internet connections feature pretty static IP addresses, especially if there were a constantly running VPN of some sort holding the connection open.
Oh to be sure even on our non-business line we have relatively static IPs, but we can’t have our service go down. I wish we didn’t have a need to have a local server, but we can’t attach hardware to other servers!
I’ve been looking at VPN software — would something like OpenVPN be appropriate?
I’ll look into dyndns.org as that seems easier to setup/handle. Would there be an advantage to using VPN over something like dyndns? Dyndns seems like it’d be really easy to setup - and from a security standpoint, I can just open up 1 obscure port and only allow the one IP to access it.