OpenVPN Support Forum

I've been trying out OpenVPN. Initially I spun up a self-hosted VPN in Azure, but now I'm trying out the cloud version. When I had my Azure machine hosting the VPN service, I could connect to the Azure machine and then ssh into my vpn connected devices at home. So right now, I have an active vpn established between the cloud service and a linux box here at home on the 192.168.15.0/24. Is there a way I can ssh into the linux box when I'm away at a coffee shop? I don't have a VM anymore in Azure, but maybe there's another way to do it on the OpenVPN cloud side.

Thanks,

-Daniel

I got this figured out. I realized that I could just install the vpn client on my Windows laptop (duh) and ssh from there to the linux box. Both on the same network! I'm super smart.

Hello D-meist,

Yes that is how it is supposed to be done. OpenVPN Cloud provides an isolated network. It does not provide an interface from outside in, unless it is through a secure VPN connection. So if you have a service you want to offer securely, you connect the device offering that service to OpenVPN Cloud. And if you want other devices to be able to connect to that service, you connect those other devices to OpenVPN Cloud too, and through that, access that particular service.

Technically you could do something like connecting a device to OpenVPN Cloud which exposes a port on the public Internet to gain access to resources in the secure VPN network without being on the VPN network yourself... but that doesn't sound like a particularly good thing to do, when the goal is to ensure the connections must first go through a secure VPN first.

Kind regards,
Johan