Synology NAS OpenVPN Server Setup & Configuration! (Tutorial)

hey everyone today we're going to look at how to securely access your nas from anywhere in the world by configuring openvpn server on your synology nas this was the most requested video from my synology nas setup and configuration guide so if you haven't seen that i'm going to leave a link in the description and i'll leave a pop-up up top for you to check it out so before we get started i want to mention that as always we have full written instructions in the description for this entire process so to get started we have to go to the package center on our nas and we have to install the vpn server application so after you install it and you open it you'll see that synology has three different vpn server types and in this tutorial we're going to look at how to set up openvpn so navigate to the openvpn section and then enable the openvpn server at this point you can change the dynamic ip address if you'd like but you don't have to as long as you're using something that's not in use you shouldn't have any problems inside of here the only other change that we have to make is that we have to allow clients to access servers land this is so that you can access your local network when you connect through your vpn after you make those changes you can apply those settings and then you have to go over the privilege section and you need to make sure that the user account that you want to connect to your vpn with has permission for openvpn so at this point the vpn server configuration is actually done and we're going to move over to the firewall at this point so if you don't have your firewall set up check out my initial setup video and it'll guide you through the whole process but we need to go in and we need to make sure that we have a firewall rule set up for udp port 1194 that is what openvpn uses after you do that you've configured your nas to accept connections on udp port 1194 we now need to configure our router by port forwarding that same udp port 1194 to our synology nas so these instructions are going to be different for everybody because everybody has a different brand router so the best thing to do is actually google the brand router that you have and port forwarding you should find a ton of tutorials that show you exactly how to do that but we need to port forward udp port 1194 to our synology nasa's ip address so if you don't have a static ip address set up for your synology nas you have to set that up first i also have those instructions in my initial setup guide as soon as you complete the port forwarding steps you're actually configured fully to actually accept connections on your synology nas for your vpn server and now you have to configure your openvpn configuration file so that you can connect to that vpn one thing that i want to note is that synology gives you the option to actually configure your external router through the synology nas itself using upnp which is universal plug and play the problem with it is that it's somewhat of a security concern and it's highly debated on if it is or if it isn't so for that reason i'm not going to go through it in this tutorial but i have a link in the written instructions that i'll show you the synology guide if you want so before we get started with these steps i want to mention that you have to have a ddns hostname configured for this step the reason for that is because most people have dynamic external ip addresses so in our configuration file we need to ensure that we're always connecting to our external ip address for our synology nas so i'm not going to go through the dns configuration process here but in the written instructions i have two tutorials there the first is how you can set up a free synology.me hostname and the second is if you don't want to use that you can use duckdns to do the same thing it doesn't matter which one you use as long as you have ddns configured the absolute only situation where you do not need a ddns hostname configured is if you have a static external ip address so to edit that configuration file we're going to go back to our vpn server application we're going to go to openvpn and then we're going to export that configuration now that's going to export a zip file and we're only going to be actually editing the openvpn.conf file that's the configuration file so in this file there are only four changes that we're going to make the first thing that we're going to do is we're going to change the section that says your server ip and we're going to make that our ddns hostname the second thing that we're going to look at is the redirect gateway line and before we do that i'm just going to quickly show you exactly what this does so when you configure a vpn there are two different types of vpns there's a split tunnel vpn and a full tunnel vpn both types allow you to access your home network and your local resources the difference is that when you're actually connecting to an external network so if you're trying to get to google a split tunnel vpn will go directly from your current network to google a full tunnel vpn will go through your home network so if you're interested in securing your connection because you're on a public wi-fi or an unknown network you must configure the full tunnel vpn this pushes all of your traffic through your home network a split tunnel vpn will actually go around your home network and it will go directly to that external network and you won't have any of those benefits before we configure this what i do is i actually have two separate config files i have one for split tunnel and i have one for full tunnel and i have both of them on every device where i use my vpn and the reason for that is because there are situations where i will be on an unknown network and i want to actually connect through my home network so i'll use the full tunnel but there are also situations where i'm on a trusted network and i don't care about my external traffic i only want to get to my local resources on my home network so for those scenarios i'll use my split tunnel vpn so that was a long explanation for what is literally one line in this config file but if you want a full tunnel vpn setup you have to remove the pound sign in the redirect gateway def1 line that's just the comment symbol and by removing that you're enabling the full tunnel vpn if you keep that commented out you will have a split tunnel vpn the next thing we're going to look at is the dhcp option now when you connect through your vpn by default openvpn falls back to google's dns servers if you do not specify a local dns server if you do have a local dns server you can put the ip address of that local dns server in this line the important thing to note with this is that if you do not have a local dns server when you try to connect through your vpn from an external network you will not be able to navigate to your local resources by host name so for example if your nas has the host name of nas you won't be able to access it by using that hostname nas you'll have to use the ip address because you don't have a local dns server configured the final thing that we're going to add is a line at the bottom that says client cert not required and we're adding that because if you don't you will receive an error when you try and connect through your vpn because it's looking for a certificate that doesn't exist since we're only using this configuration file but adding this line will stop that error from occurring so at this point our entire openvpn server is fully configured and now we just have to test it so to test it you have to download the openvpn client on whatever device you're using whether it's your cell phone or pc whatever it is but the important thing to note is that you must be connected to an outside network you cannot test this from your internal network where your vpn is currently hosted so if you're using a cell phone that's a great way to test it just make sure you're using your cell phone's network so you're going to create a new profile on whatever device you're testing this with and then you're going to have to add that openvpn configuration file that we just created at this stage you're just going to log in with your username and the password that we set up initially in the privileges section and then you should be able to connect so on that device if you tried to connect to dsm you should be able to now because you're actually connected to your local network so i'm just quickly showing here the differences between the split tunnel vpn and the full tunnel vpn but it doesn't really matter whatever you configured as long as you can connect in you'll be able to access your local resources so if you made it this far i want to quickly ask if you like the format of these videos so i try to condense them and i just show the tutorials without much of an explanation of what it is that we're doing and how it works but if you guys are looking for more of an explanation before we get into the tutorial just leave it in the comments so i know because i'm going based on kind of the things that i like to see in a tutorial and if that's not the case for the audience that i want to you know cater everything to you guys so thanks a lot for watching i've been getting a ton of great feedback and i really appreciate it if you have any questions leave them in the comments and if you like the video give it a thumbs up and subscribe thanks everyone

Channel: WunderTech

Views: 75,286

Keywords: synology nas openvpn, synology nas openvpn setup, synology nas openvpn configuration, openvpn synology nas, openvpn synology, synology openvpn, openvpn setup and configuration synology nas, synology nas openvpn server setup and configuration, synology nas openvpn server, synology diskstation openvpn, synology diskstation openvpn server, openvpn on synology, synology nas openvpn 2020, synology openvpn 2020, synology openvpn setup 2020, nas openvpn, openvpn server on synology nas

Id: qbfa-YVUfls

Length: 9min 29sec (569 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 05 2020