Lab 6: Overview

The previous labs have shown us how to deploy software packages using Docker. SaaS, or software as a service, is providing applications that others can use. We have been configuring the software and hosting it using Docker and Nginx. We have been providing both the software and the platform.

SaaS is for users to interact with the software

Platform Services

A platform is an environment that executes and hosts software. Docker is a platform for running a virtualized instance of an OS that executes code. PaaS or platform as a service is a service that automates the process of hosting applications. Like most services, PaaS vendors charge a fee.

Unfortunately, we won’t install any PaaS tools because they require using ports 80 and 443. Changing the configs is complicated. These tools install on the VPS directly and then use Docker and other virtualized services. Platforms work best if the tool is the gateway and reverse proxy, which means that you need a VPS dedicated to the platform service. You can explore PaaS tools on your own.

PaaS is for developers to host the software

Infrastructure Services

Now, we’ll shift our focus from software to infrastructure services. IaaS or infrastructure as a service provides hardware and virtualized infrastructure.

We will work with OpenVPN, which is a virtualized network. A quick internet search will reveal numerous companies that provide the service of using the internet through their infrastructure. Most of these companies use OpenVPN. You will learn how to install OpenVPN on your VPS.

OpenVPN is a company that provides the open-source version of OpenVPN software. Like many other organizations that produce open-source software, they provide paid services and they release the community edition of that software. We will use the community edition.

We will learn how to install and configure OpenVPN using Docker. The Docker image does most of the work for us. We will not learn how to network remote LANs using OpenVPN. You can figure out the configurations once you have the service set up using a basic configuration.

Running OpenVPN in a container has benefits because it is easy to set up and using a Docker container isolates the connection from your VPS. Using this method makes your public internet connection become the IP address of your VPS. There are two primary results:

  1. The websites that you visit assume that you are at the location.

  2. Your data is encrypted from your OpenVPN client to that endpoint.

    • All data funnels through a single port to VPS.

      • The default for OpenVPN is 1194, but you can use any port.

    • The VPS then uses the port required for the service (HTTPS, DNS, RTP) as if the request originated from the VPS.

Goals for Lab 6

The goal for this lab is to configure an OpenVPN instance using Docker and then connect to it using an OpenVPN client.

During this lab, you will learn how to:

  1. configure OpenVPN in a Docker container.

  2. modify the server and client configurations.

  3. connect to the OpenVPN server using the client config to access the internet.