Tailscale and my DataCenter
So I have been leasing a rack in a DataCenter for my HomeLab purposes. I recognize this brings in some arguments around "HomeLab" however there is something nice about not having spinning fans right behind me an office that is somehow 10 degrees warmer than anywhere else in the house.
So I have been a Tailscale user for a while now. It is an awesome product that I recommend to a lot of people. However I had been using OpenVPN in my DataCenter rack. I had installed the Tailscale PFSense plugin so that I could easily get into the Firewall if I needed to make a quick change while I couldn't easily connect to the OpenVPN and this combo worked great for a while.
However. I did the thing that I tell everyone not to do.
I edited the VPN configuration while I was actively connected over the same VPN with no backup route in.
Cue my panic as I am trying to plan out driving to the DataCenter, showing my badge, them debating on whether they could let me in or not, and then finally letting me in.
Then I was connected over my Tailscale install just to see if the Firewall was even still up (who knows maybe I pushed a change right at upstream had a problem). So while messing with the OpenVPN settings to try and get my connection back I remembered the subnet routing feature within Tailscale. I enabled it, added the routes I needed (ensured the Firewall rules allowed it) hit save and hoped. It took a few seconds for Tailscale to reload but I did reconnect and I have been happily routing my traffic to my DataCenter over Tailscale ever since. I can get to my ProxMox hosts and my K8s clusters like they are sitting right next to my laptop.
Overall there are certainly a few learning outcomes:
- Listen to your own advice. I say this to myself a lot but I am bad at following it and unfortunately there are times it requires a humbling experience like this to remember I can't snap my fingers and fix the thing.
- Leveraging more things like Tailscale as a primary and using OpenVPN as more of a secondary. Ultimately I want to get OpenVPN back up and running. It is a good product and I like having the options to get in just in case.
So overall you should go sign up for Tailscale. It is an awesome product that I can't recommend enough. There website has a super easy sign up. I didn't find a referral link where I could add more devices or something (Tailscale if you are reading this and want to chat about a partnership I would love to chat) so I will certainly link to their normal site
