Setup Synology OpenVPN Server (easy, secure, remote access) 

UPADTE: OpenVPN connect for Windows recently updated, and broke this config. This is the fix: www.spacerex.co/how-to-fix-synology-openvpn-server-windows-unknown-unsupported-options/

I followed SpaceRex's instructions from his first video a couple of years ago on setting up OpenVPN on my Synology 920+ NAS. OpenVPN has been working flawlessly ever since 👍! I can access everything from watching my movies on PLEX, to playing my Playstation 5 remotely, to making small configurations and retrieving files from my Windows and MAC machines remotely with OpenVPN and my Synology 920+ NAS. SpaceRex's tutorials are awesome 👌!

I'm going to take a look!!! I'm using cloudlfare tunnels (ZeroTrust) (free) to access my NAS and all my local services from internet. Works awesome because it encrypts the whole connection and also hide all my ports. No port forwarding in my router. It also works flawlessly when sharing files through Synology with others. The link NAS creates when sharing a files, goes through the tunnel too. No port on the link either. You should do a cloud flare tunnel tutorial. The other good thing about cloudflare is it doesn’t matter if your IP changes and also it doesn’t matter if you are behind a CGNat. Also, you don’t have to install a client software to others to be able to access it (you only have to install ONE client inside your network) 🙏. Hey man, thanks for your videos, I’ve learn a lot watching all your videos

I use open vpn to connect to my nas from my phone when I'm away. However, I go through my DDNS is that not correct?

Love these tutorials! Thank you. However, could you please please please create tutorial on how to set up OpenVPN for use with Plex for remote access? Or possibly, a better way to do think somewhat securely. I'm in process of researching "secure" remote access options and getting lost in rabbit hole of possible solution. I just want to be able to remotely watch my Plex content in somewhat secure manner but can't quite figure out how that works, i.e. how do I connect my TV up with VPN to connect to my NAS over secure connection? Thank you

Thank you! This works v well. However, I turned off my Sybnolgy NAS for 5 days as we had workers in the house. After turning on the NAS after 5 days the VPN stopped working. I saw certificate errors in the VPN client log (see below). I had to delete the VPNServer package, including the database and start again. Now it's working ok. Any ideas why it failed, please? Error: "VERIFY ERROR: depth=0, error=certificate signature failure: C=TW, L=Taipel, O=Synology Inc., CN=synology"

@spaceRexWill I have a question. I cant connect on public wifi on the train. The solution to this has been said to open port 443 and have a tcp connection. My question is it safe to do so on my nas with openVPN? By the way great tutorials. Learning al lot.

Great video again. However I will stick with Tailscale you showed some time ago. It is perfect for me. I do use quickconnect too because I have some people uploading foto's to a very specific folder. However I wanted a good tutorial on Open VPN and now I have it.

You mentioned having two routers. What's the reason for that? I got my own mesh router but I replaced the ISP router with it as opposed to adding it.

Thanks for this video. How I can use this setup with router RT6600ax?

Hi Will, big fan of your tutorials! What's your POV on running OpenVPN on NAS vs capable router (e.g. rt6600ax)? Assume router would be preferred? (more secure, easier to configure as no port forwarding required) but NAS would not get its 10.x.x.x direct IP?

10:41 It is worth to mention that many of hotels blocks all ports except 80, 433. So, if you set port 7854 you will be not able to reach/use your vpn.

I think Tailscale vpn is one best and zero configure required.

Hi Will, Thanks for this impressive video.👏 I followed it and did the same thing a few times, but I couldn't get it to work. It gives "Connection Timeout" error every time. Do you have any suggestions for this?

I've got OpenVPN working and connected, but my external IP isn't what it should be as if I'm home. What am I missing?

Visit snhu.edu/spacerex to see what the current average annual salary for a computer scientist is and request free information about the program. Thanks to SNHU for sponsoring this video!

I have 2 routers from the same ISP. The oldest one had NAT loopback and worked fine for external access but then I upgraded to the newer version to get better wifi and I have always had issues as the new one doesn't have NAT loopback. I resonated with your comment about having 2 routers. Let's say my primary (old one with NAT loopback) router connected to the internet is 192.168.1.1 and my newer router is 192.168.1.2. With your example port forwarding 7854 would I put the destination IP address as 192.168.1.2?

Awesome tutorial, for some reason tailscale didnt work for me some I needed another option, this worked great

Hi, I followed your instruction and it worked well. However on the client side (my laptop), the ovpn sometimes asking the client certificate. Is it something important? Or the client will work just fine without the certificate? And if it is something that adding another authenticating level, how am I create the certificate? I am hoping that anyone can answer my question as I cannot stop thinking to be curious about it. Thanks

How about wireguard? Way faster and less overhead. Any way to use that on DSM?

Followed every step except for Port Forwarding already set up and was getting SO FRUSTRATED. Been having problems with router VPN as well. Discovered that my Port Forwards all had TCP rather than UDP. Such a simple fix! I think quite some time ago I tested and got much better throughput with TCP. I don't remember the details any more, but that's what i get for knowing just a little about a lot of things. Enough to be dangerous.

Since VPN server doesn't support WireGuard, is there a way to use Container Manager to setup WireGuard tunnels?

Hi, very nice video, i was able to setup everything from A to Z thanks to you. However, i can't connect to Synology Drive, Synology Photos, etc with 10.8.0.1, any idea why ? I'm not using Synology's firewall

Hello, I have an issue using this configuration. I cannot play videos on Synology Drive and Photos due to invalid certificate. It require to play video through HTTP, but since this port is close, it doesn't work neither. Do you know how to generate a working certificate (Let's Encrypt), so I can still use Drive and Photo as usual, over HTTPS? Thank you!

To anyone having problems, I needed to allow the port through my windows firewall too.

I've watched about a dozen of your Synology Nas tutorials and never had a single issue with anything. you explain everything in detail but not in a too techy type of way. Also when you mentioned people might have a router and an other router (which i have) i was relieved, because you explained it very well! Thanks alot for your help and keep it up👍

If I have a Synology router would you recommend doing the vpn set there and not on DSM?

What happens if the local network in the coffee shop has the same subnet 10.8.0.0? Can a rogue SMB server with an IP address of 10.8.0.1 steal my SMB/NAS credentials and potentially use them through the synology quickconnect? Is this possible or am I going too far?

This protocol doesn't work. Tried many times all steps. Your other video also is incomplete without the port fowarding protocol. Doesn't work - I am using MAC. I think you could specify the differences between mac and windows so your audience better know what to do and wether they should consider trying this...

Hi Will, Great tutorial and thank you for sharing it 👍 I managed to set it up accordingly however when accessing my Syno NAS DS220+ from my mobile hotspot on 10.8.0.1 it says in the URL bar "not secured" and is actually crossed out. Is my connection secured by the OpenVPN tunnel or could it be something else that I screwed up whilst setting up my OpenVPN connection ? Oh by the way, I'm running a 64x windows 10 PC. Any ideas / suggestions .... Secondly, When connecting on my iPhone (with WiFi switched off) using the OpenVPN iOS app I'm able to login to my NAS using the local IP adress of the NAS and the "lock" sign indicating a secured connection is established is shown. That being said, when I then open i.e. the syno Photo app or any other Syno app on my iPhone will all traffic then be routed automatically over the OpenVPN connection or will it still use my regular 5G network and thus bypass the OpenVPN connection ? Thanks in advance ! BR Anthony

I am concerned about hackers sniffing any forwarded ports in my IP Router. True VPN doe snot require port forwarding.

Hi , thanks for your video ! I trying to use a windows RDP connection with openvpn but I cannot reach the distant computer by Name or DDNS , always need to use IP 10..... ( dyn IP) . When connected with VPN , we don t see other Lan connected . Probably some settings but impossible to set static ip to VPN client so difficult ro reach RDP connection. Thanks in advance for your support

Great tutorial. I have this set up and connected. A question, when on my LAN on my Mac OS I connect to my NAS with smb:\\Terry_NAS_Network, which I set up. Is there a way I can do that when on OpenVPN (instead of using the IP address).

Is there a way to connect to my NAS using it's IP when I connect with my OpenVPN? I can get the smb drive to connect, but can't get to the NAS through it's IP. When I had the VPN setup as L2TP/IPSec I could access the Synology web gui. Great video, I appreciate all you do!

I've been trying to learn to setup Docker / Container Manager apps on my DS920+. Part of my use case is being able to connect to the NAS via a VPN. However, the newly released DSM 7.2 no longer supports desktop shortcuts to the container apps; you have to connect to them from your desktop browser directly using the NAS's IP address and the app's port number. So, how would you run those Docker / CM apps when you are connecting remotely ?

Great video SpaceRex! Love it. Just one problem: my connection stopped working after a few days. I changed nothing.... What could that be?

This was a great video. Thank you! I have set up my first VPN, can't believe it. Does anyone know if it is possible to access the mapped drives as if I were on my LAN while working remotely?

Hi, I live in Canada. If I go to the Bahamas and need to access my Synology drive to upload pictures on it (with synology Drive). Will I be able to do that? Or do I need to do the special configurations in this video?

Followed your video and I get to OpenVPN and get an error, after the Cert error which I choose to continue. I have commented out the pull line as suggested. But still won't load. Any suggestions?

Silly question... If you use open vpn with your nas, does anyone else using a service hosted on your nas such as web service through docker still need to have vpn or they're all good just as before? (I've enabled some of my services through reverse proxy that my friends use, they just use the services and are not needing to log into the nas)

you can setup with dynamic IP using DDNS in external access on your NAS

I wasn’t able to connect with openVPN until I’ve added following rule in the config file (under my remote IP) client-cert-not-required

need to activate VPN but my company didn't have firewall , is it dangrous to install VPN or what?

It worked to connect to my synology and mount it in the finder, but the streaming you were mentioning isnt working (i did remove the "#" in the text edit document) any ideas?

Thanks! I followed this video and it didn’t work, had to disable compression and comment out comp-lzo and it works now!

I love your videos, they've been very helpful. But whatever those first few words you say are - I cannot figure out.

Need to know more details on Static Route Guide how exactly we can set if we try to access VPN from inside the local network

Beautiful! I got it to work. thanks!

that was a fantastic explanation, thank you! (I use it on android, paired with cx explorer)

Is it possible to have synology/openvpn provide the access for URL configuration in the clients?

Thanks mate. Well explained and easy to follow. much appreciated

Thanks SpaceRex! I was wondering if you could do a video on synology routers? I have a very old router from 2013 and want a new one. But I have no idea where to start! Thank you for your great content!

My OpenVPN server is on a TP Link router, and the setup is the same, the VPN client connection works, I can see everything on the LAN (assuming firewall is turned off on the target machine), but I can't access my NAS (Zyxel NAS326). That NAS doesn't have a firewall either, or at least it's not configurable. Any tips?

when I put the ip address of my nas in port forwarding it says the Ip address is already taken. Any ideas?

I followed your tutorial on my new DS423+ to setup VPN connection from the OpenVPN client in my MBP. The 1st problem was option error message, I common out the "PULL" in the *.OVPN file and the problem is resolved. My new problem is OpenVPN client auto discoonect with an "AUTH_FAILED" error after the session is established. Not able to identify the root cause. Any suggestion is appreciated.

I got to the last step at 18:30 and the open vpn has a connection timeout. Any ideas on what to check to fix?

Unfortunately, I have to go to broadband for my Internet access. I live in a rural area with no cable or fiber options. I have the new T-Mobile Home Internet modems for work and home. Now the good news is that I have good 5G connectivity and really good download speeds of 400Mbs plus. I also just got the Synology 4-Bay DiskStation DS923+ now that I have outgrown my Synology DS218. I am wired to the modem with 1GBE and also run a local 10GBE for my Mac Studio, Cloud Pod with a 10GBe hub that crosses over to the 1GBE for the internet. I stay away from wifi to the router per one of your earlier videos. Now, what is the best way for me to set it up so I can access files remotely and possibly securely?

It would be nice to have explanation how to authenticate using certificate.

This did not work with OpenVPN Connect on MacOS; I had to use Tunnelblick as the VPN client instead... not sure why; I was getting some kind of certificate error with OpenVPN Connect; also I running version 6 of DSM, so maybe that's why... idk, maybe I should upgrade to DSM 7

Hi! I installed VPN Server package on my DS723+, but when I open it, and go to General Settings, nothing appear on Network interface and account type, they are empty, what am I missing here? :/

Very well explained thank you. I have the VPNsec function in my AVM router and the new version VPN Wireguard with Wireguard can be created with 1 click. My question is what is the difference? if I have VPN directly in the router. Greetings from Germany👋👋👋

Hello! Thanks for the tutorial. I've got the error when running OpenVPN with exported config: Options error: On Windows, --ifconfig is required when --dev tun is used Help me, please, I'm totally new to OpenVPN UPDATE I uncommented the pull option and everything works fine

Hi SpaceRex. I finished implementing port forwarding using OpenVPN after watching your general video on the five different ways to do port forwarding and then this video which goes into detail. Networking is not my friend, but you provided sufficient detail for me to get it done!! Thank you and good luck with your business.

Hello! Thanks for the tutorial. I've followed the guide in full. However, I'm sure I'm doing something wrong. I thought that I would be able acces my server as I was on my local network. basically, when connected to my server via openVPN, I'am still required to download a file (i.e: docx file) before I can exploit it. It does the same thing as if I was connecting via quickConnect. It is a total pain on the bum to having to download every time a file before using it whilst I'm away. I would love to directly not having to download it while not on my local network. Please can you help me?

Worked flawlessly, thanks, man. Only thing is, the android App won't let you check the "missing external certificate" i need to confirm every connection. not a problem.

I think Privado changes ther ovpn files. i cant get it to work.

Just stumbled across this now. Great video. Thanks! Here´s my problem: We have a Synology NAS in our small office. Years ago, somebody set up Open VPN on it, the config file is in my OpenVPN directory. mNow I got a Synology NAS for my home. Can I service two separate NASs through OpenVPN on the same Windown computer? Thanks in advance!

By the way, the NAS on my network have 192.168.x.x. it's detected as NAS with that IP in the router as well. Using port forwarding, I map the 192.168.x.x IP not 10.8.0.1 and it was working fine until now...Is this wrong ?

I've completed all the steps all the way up to connecting to the VPN successfully but cant connect to my files on the NAS via windows device. Do i map a network drive? If so, how do i do so? Please help!

HI there, is it not possible to just use Synology VPN?

Which sharing protocol would allow me to share only ONE of my volumes? Or, specific folders? It seems I have to share all, or nothing.

I just want make sure I understand correctly if I setup my OpenVPN on my NAS and for example using Synology Photos and setup link were they can download a group of photos they will not be able to do it correct?

I've had 2 problems - port forwarding and CA certificate for Proton OpenVpn. Port forwarding issue was answered - Starlink so it will not work. The CA Certificate seems to be a non-issue...Great coverage. Thanks

Hi I am wondering about transfer bandwidth when under VPN, always seems slow n bottlenecks, eg video transfer at 50mbps on a 400 mbps ISP. Any thing I can check n adjust?

I don't have a public IP and so of course, ports too, how, in this case, can I make use of my Synology NAS and OpenVPN to configure a network so I can access my services from the outside?

I could perfectly follow until the SMB connection. I do not have any program called Finder on my PC. Is there any other way to connect to SMB or how can I get this program?

Thanks for the video....I'm not sure if this is a client server VPN or a peer to peer vpn. I like to know what limitations might someone might have like using hyper backup, does this use ports, or can use quick connect

Great tutorial ! I had 1 problem though, I wanted a different external port from the internal port (I know overkill) and it did not work at first. I figured out that the port put in the ovpn file was the internal port but needed to be the external port. Most people wont have that problem, but if you redo this video later Id give a warning when editing the ovpn file or make an example with different ports. I though Id mention it hoping its could help. Thanks for sharing your knowledge !

When creating the connection with open VPN it says connection timed out?

OpenVPN not connect outside of home network when I used port other than 1194. I can only connect out side of home netwrok if I use port 1194. Can you suggest?

I wish you didn't skip over enabling of IPV6. That is one thing that I am having the hardest time trying to setup to get around my ISPs CGNAT config.

@spacerexwill Is OpenVpn more secure and easier than Tailscale? Or do they provide different services? The video was good but at the end I wondered what the diff was between the 2.

Well watching this video took a bit longer than the 24:23 it shows for me to get through. Been meaning to accomplish this for quite some time now. Finally walked through it step by step with you and I'm now running OpenVPN on the NAS and connected via my iphone. Made sure Plex worked on the iphone and no problem. The next thing I tried to do was connect over the VPN using the Marantz remote app to see if I could crank the volume on my wife when I'm not home. No joy. Probably for the best. ;) Anyway, thanks so much for walking me through this. Just need to get my laptops connected. Although not sure how I'd test it without taking them away from my home network. In due time, but before I'm on the road again.

I set up successfully after following your instructions. But how could I freeze the IP address for each client because I wanna use remote desktop in windows system. IP changing is really annoying.

Have you noticed any remote connection trouble with 7.2? I can no longer connect to the remote Nas with hyper back up and hyper Backup. Volt. It continues to say the remote location is off-line when I definitely have the right IP, port, etc entered in. Both servers were Juat updated to 7.2

Hey man... your video was amazing... I recently moved to a new location and your video help me trouble shoot why my NAS was no longer working... turns out my port forwarding wasn't active. Thanks so much!!

I have this working now, thanks very much for the video - I did have to enable UPNP however because standard port forwarding on my router didn't appear to be working. Allowing the synology to create the upnp ports does. One problem...the vpn is also allowing access to other internal ip addresses (such as the router itself) - have I missed a step somewhere? I really just wanted the vpn for access to the nas.

How do I edit the ovpn file in windows? I used word and notepad, but it change the file to txt. I have try to change it back with properties with no luck. Any Ideas for me?

instead of tailscale, could we use some VPS provider to get a similar functionality? I just don't want to use my SSO identity for tailscale..

If someone have 2 routers setup then second router on wan must have static or fixed IP on wan side to portfording wil works - you can set this in first router using dhco reservation or manualy set wan ip on second router bot set ISP modem on bridge mode will be works beter

Great video! Referenced several times now for troubleshooting.

Thank you for brilliant easy to understand video. Do you know a way to connect a vpn connection together with vpn server running on my Synology? I want to use a vpn to hide my synology traffic.

love it. i just think about how can i config my own nas and your video just popup on my feed 2h after you uploaded 🎉 thanks a lot :)

I’ve got openvpn up and running. Works beautifully. I can’t get it to work using a reverse proxy though.

Hi guys, Synology VPN server still applicable in 2013 model Synology? Thanks

I want to give access of vpn to my brother for few days how can I limit make it accessible for limited time period

Would this be the only safe way for me to share synology photos or Plex server with friends and family?

OH! So great! Thanks so much. We`ve been months trying to connect from external networks and now we could. Really gratefull man

Question, can my son remotely backup his MacBook Pro while at College to a NAS at our home? Also, can he backup his iPhone as well? Thanks and love the videos!

Excellent presentation and tutorial ! Has anyone managed to configure a Synology DSM OpenVPN server and client using a Netgear Nightawk M2 (MR2100) mobile router ?