Setting up multiple linux home servers to access from outside home

Question

I am trying to set up several server to which I can SSH from outside networks and the following things come to mind.

If I use a solution similar to this previous question then it means that I can only forward 1 ssh port 22.

Possible options:

1. Should I just give all of the servers different non-standard ssh ports? That seems to be a good idea for security and being able to keep the same solution of port forwarding.

   2. The other option is to setup a VPN to my home network and then keep all SSH access within my local network. Is this last option more secure, the same, or less secure than option 1?

Finally, is there any other way you would implement this? are there any workarounds to check what my home server IP is from the outside network given the fact that I don't have a Static IP.

Answer 1

If you have the option to use a VPN, I would take that route. While forwarding the individual SSH sessions would work, a VPN gives you a lot more flexibility. You only need to worry about VPN access and then you have the ability to use any port or service per machine.

Answer 2

While setting up a VPN for this strikes me subjectively as "more correct", running SSH on different nonstandard ports is by far the easiest and simplest.

I would personally go for this, as all of my servers run on nonstandard ports anyway to avoid botnets cluttering up my logfiles with failed login attempts. Of course this means that I am 110% sure that SSH will be the only service I'll wver need to access feom the outside.

While a properly configured VPN is very reliable, it does add an aditional point of complexity with the potential for failure.