r/TrueNAS: FQDN with home DHCP dynamic IP

Paul -
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This article archives a conversation, which took place in a subreddit post (original source linked below) and to which I contributed a solution or answer (with the u/MasterofSynapse handle), in a Q&A format.

Original Reddit post: https://www.reddit.com/r/truenas/comments/y6enf4/fqdn_with_home_dhcp_dynamic_ip/

Question

Hello fellow enthusiast, I’m running TrueNAS scale on Dell Poweredge R720 chassis, works great perfect for my home lab. Since I’m self hosted at home on a gigabit fiber I have no option for static public IP address. I need a FQDN to use SSL on various web services I’m running however once in a while my DHCP lease renews and I’m assigned a new public ip address this temporary taking out my public facing service out until I manually edit DNS A record to reflect correct ip address.

I was wondering if there’s a charts app that can handle this for me automatically. I’m using google domains services as a registrar, ideally it would monitor my public ip every hour or so and update just one A record if it has changed.

Answer

I have two pieces of advice for you:

  1. If you just want Dynamic DNS, then look at https://github.com/timothymiller/cloudflare-ddns.
  2. If you want increased security on top of being able to access your services remotely, look at Cloudflare One, the Zero Trust platform from Cloudflare. With that, you can deploy an outgoing-only tunnel and it enables you to reach your systems that way, while also protecting them with an extra auth layer, since no one else except you needs access.