Cloudflare Tunnels: The Easiest Way to Secure Your Self-Hosted Services
Charles L.
Customer Success Manager & AI Analytics Lead | Security Enthusiast | Innovation Driver | ex-Sonos, ex-Wirepas
Over the holiday period, I got some time to finally work on my side projects. One has an API that I wanted to reach from "the outside," so it had to run on one of my VPS's, and it got me thinking about the best way to expose this API securely. Since I host some domains through Cloudflare, Enter Cloudflare Tunnels.
Light at the End of the Tunnel
The traditional way of exposing services from your VPS involves a fair bit of juggling: port forwarding, SSL certificates, reverse proxies, and constantly wondering if you've configured everything securely. Plus, your server's IP address is out there in the open, which as a part-time sysadmin is not ideal from a security perspective.
The Game-Changer
What makes Cloudflare Tunnels different is how it flips this all around.
Instead of exposing my VPS to the internet:
"It Just Works" - Charles 2024
What really sold me, after trying out a few other methods, the setup process.
Cloudflare managed to make something complex feel trivially simple:
And That's it, your tunnel will show up and is ready to go.
Cloudflare takes care of the rest;
领英推荐
No complex config files to manage
Everything can be controlled through Cloudflare's dashboard
For my project testing needs, this has been the perfect solution. I can quickly expose my development endpoints through a secure tunnel, manage access controls through Cloudflare's dashboard, and focus on actually building and testing my API instead of infrastructure management.
If you're running anything, whether it's APIs, web apps, or other services, and want a secure way to access them without the traditional headaches, this is def worth looking into.
Some helpful resources to get started:
- Cloudflare Zero Trust Dashboard: https://one.dash.cloudflare.com
- Documentation & Quick Start Guide: https://developers.cloudflare.com/cloudflare-one/connections/connect-networks/
Anyone else using Cloudflare Tunnels for their projects?
#CloudSecurity #DevOps #API #Cloudflare #Security #SelfHosting #homeserver