Product suggestions: Single IP4 pre-configured cloud server clusters, VPN Feature

VPN
1

As IP4 addresses get more scarce, and IP6 just isn’t there yet, I was thinking about ways to work with that. I saw that you recently added the option to only have a private network IP address

I would like to suggest you create a new product line of pre-configured cloud server clusters. I would guess the target demographic would be HA webapps and multi-server data processing/analysis services.

My proposal is that it would work something like this:

  1. I pick a basic default (e.g. HA webapp)
  2. I then
  • Decide how many loadbalancers I want, basic configuration etc.
  • Add servers. As well as the usual options for the servers, I can configure the basis for how they are used (e.g. web = ports 80/443 through the load balancer). If it’s possible to forward requests by domain through the loadbalancer, then allow the domain to be configured here as well. By default, only private network is selected, IP4 and IP6 are disabled.
  1. I press go, and once it is all setup and created, I receive (with example details):
  • A private network that is specific to these servers
  • 1 loadbalancer, configured with an external IP4 and routing via private network as per the individual server configs.
  • 6 servers, loaded with whichever images I chose. No external IPs, but all on the private network.
  • Access to a vpn config file management system (I suggest openvpn based) to connect via vpn to all the servers, or even better (if it’s possible) simply giving me an IP on the private network.

I would then go to the various servers to install the various packages on the relevant servers and manually update the loadbalancer config as needed.

Aside from the VPN, all of this can be done via the Hetzner interface already, this would just make the process much easier and shinier.

This has multiple benefits to both Hetzner and the customer.

For Hetzner, reducing the consumption of IP4 is the big benefit. Increased sales is hopefully another :wink:

For customers it makes a multi-server setup much more accessible, secure and feel cheaper (as the base price for most servers excludes public IP). It can be complicated and a pain to setup load balancers (from scratch, less so with the load balancer feature), routing and VPN. If you’re not experienced with how to do it, it can be quite confusing, especially creating a VPN!

My secondary product suggestion is to add a VPN feature, either as part of a network, or an overall feature that could encompass multiple networks. This would make it super easy for people to securely work with multiple servers that have no external IP4. As per above, if it’s possible to be able to use the VPN to just get an IP address on the private network for my external server(s), that would be amazing. Right now I can’t think how that could work, but it would be pretty cool :slight_smile:

Thanks for reading!

2

People setting up such clusters are usually using tools like Terraform, Ansible or they are just automating stuff via API. Such a feature would take a considerable amount of effort to build, maintain and would only be used by a small percentage of people, when it’s possible to click through it in 5 minutes if you hate automation. Don’t really know what’s the supposed benefit here. You would have to provide some initial configuration either way.

Setting up VPN solution like Tailscale or Pritunl is 3-10 commands (if you don’t automate it) and often you have to buy license for your solution either way. (If it’s anything serious)

As for the IPv4, you’re paying for it, if it gets too expensive for Hetzner, they’ll raise the price as any other provider. When IPv4 gets too expensive, the incentive to use IPv6 will be greater.

3

Hetzner’s API is nice enough that this can be done - or as u/CAP_NET_ADMIN has said automation tools like Terraform can help. But for what you’re suggesting it isn’t too hard to script the hcloud CLI to do this and create some Cloud Init templates to bootstrap the VMs (I did this recently and posted a video - not plugging it but you can find it from my profile).

If I’m not mistaken you could also just get the free IPv6 and proxy it via CloudFlare using their Pseudo IPv4. That then means you won’t need to pay for any public IPv4 addresses.