Hey! Sorry for the repeating question, I have a very specific question though.
For context, I access my services using a vpn, and that’s been great. However, I’ve been a lot of people mentioning reverse proxies. Are they necessary or more of a convenience thing? I ask because I don’t see something that I cannot do with my current vpn setup.
Thanks!
A reverse proxy is handy to have even in the presence of a VPN. There are still some applications with thoroughly outdated SSL stacks that are difficult or impossible to secure, for example. A reverse proxy can terminate these connections over a privileged local management network, and accept client connections using a more modern encryption scheme (and even add multi-factor authentication if required).
As others have said though, if you’re happy to continue using a VPN to access your self-hosted services, in principle there is no problem with doing so.