About Hosts
A Host is an application server(s) that offers private services accessible by the WPC. It is reachable by the tunnel IP address(es) assigned to its Connectors. If a domain name is provided to it, it is also accessible via that domain name.
A Host is an application server(s) that offers private services accessible by the WPC. It is reachable by the tunnel IP address(es) assigned to its Connector(s). If a domain name is provided to it, it is also accessible via that domain name. For more information on Connectors, refer to About Connectors and About Host Connectors.
Note
The tunnel IP addresses do not change once assigned.
You can access applications running on a server, computer, network-attached storage (NAS), or any computing device that can set up an OpenVPN tunnel. The computing device you need to access is a Host in CloudConnexa. The connection profile used by the OpenVPN client or Connector on the computing device creates an outbound, always-on connection to CloudConnexa.
The Connector software is installed on the application server to access the application via the WPC. Only the applications running on the server are made accessible.
A Host can represent multiple application servers. For example, if an FTP service uses two servers for redundancy, a single Host can be configured with the domain name ftp.lab.local and two Connectors, each installed on an FTP server. When connected users access the service using the domain name, CloudConnexa will automatically balance the load of incoming requests among the two FTP servers that comprise the Host using their Connector's tunnel IP addresses in a round-robin fashion for the domain name resolution.
Applications and IP services can be configured to define granular services for access control to the Host. For example, ftp.lab.local can be configured as an Application that allows only TCP communication on ports 20 and 21, and ssh.lab.local can be configured as an Application that allows only TCP communication on port 22. Access Groups can then be configured to allow a specific group of users access to SSH and another group access to FTP on the same application server.
Note
Configure a Network to access all applications and services reachable from or hosted on a network. Refer to About Networks.
Difference between a Host and a Network
For a Host:
A Connector is installed on the application server.
The Connector does NOT act as a router.
Only applications or services running on the computing instance where the Connector is installed can be accessed.
No access to other applications on the network is provided.
No DNS Record entries are required. Any domain name or Application assigned to the Host is automatically resolved to one of its Connector's tunnel IP addresses.
For a Network:
A Connector acts as a software router.
OpenVPN-compatible routers can act as Connectors.
IPsec routers can act as Connectors (Beta feature).
Any private or public application or service reachable by that network is accessible.
When an IP Service is configured, a Route must also be configured.
A DNS record must be added, or a private DNS server must be used to resolve domain names to IP addresses of that network for configured Applications that represent private applications.