I’ve never used a commercial VPN service for remote access to anything in my network; I’ve always run my own VPN server (typically OpenVPN) on my router (in recent years that’s been pfSense or OPNsense) and connected to that from whatever remote location I’m at. It’s worked very well to access everything on my LAN, including my NAS.
More recently, I’ve started playing with Tailscale, and I’d expect it would do what you’re looking for. Create an account there (free), create a jail for it in CORE, pkg install tailscale in that jail, and tailscale up in that jail. Set up that device to advertise a route to your LAN. Then install Tailscale on whatever devices you want to use remotely and connect to it when you’re away from your LAN.
The problem for the OP @Darkkhelmet is actually from the other direction.
They’re at home, on their local network. The software runs on each computer, to connect outwards through the VPN to websites, remote servers, and etc.
The problem arises if there is no “local bypass”. Trying to connect to a local network device (such as the TrueNAS server) would be met with “not found”, since obviously a target of something like 192.168.0.101 doesn’t work through the VPN tunnel.
Many commercial products have a “local bypass” option, which bypasses the VPN if for local network IP address.
For some reason, this is not working consistently for @Darkkhelmet, and not even ExpressVPN’s customer service could figure it out. Apparently, the problem persists with Surfshark, albeit “not as poorly”.
That’s why to do anything TrueNAS-related, they need to disable their VPN client software temporarily.
EDIT: As a comparison, I’ve used Eddie, Mullvad, and ProtonVPN. All three software applications have a “local network bypass” option, which have all worked consistently for me. I can keep the VPN client “active”, and it will not interfere with stuff I do on the local network.
Ah. Perhaps my confusion results from my not having any understanding why you’d want to be running such a VPN connection on one’s home PC in the first place. But in that case, no, my suggestions wouldn’t be helpful.
Thank you for the detailed explanation. Both VPN products have a local bypass option. Surfshark has something called Invisible on LAN. When that is turned on it makes my PC invisible to the rest of the devices on the LAN so, of course, it’s turned off.
Surfshark also has the ability to set applications, websites, and IP addresses to be ignored by the VPN. I have added Acronis to the applications list and added the NAS fixed IP to the IP address list but the backup still fails but strangely (I will explain) and I can not see the shared folders in file explorer. I can connect to the NAS console with the VPN active though,
The backup failures with Acronis happen at the end of the backup. It actually performs the backup but is unable to close the backup file. So I guess I’m stuck if I want to use Surfshark. I may try Proton as was mentioned here. As for using a VPN at all I guess I’m just a bit paranoid with everything that’s going on and like the extra isolation.
