Server deployment
Server is an all-in-one container that manages tunnels and forwarding configuration, client connections and performs the actual tunnelling.
To start using self-hosted Webhook Relay tunnelling server, follow this guide. Tunnelling server is called Transponder.
Image name:
webhookrelay/transponder:latest
- HTTP/HTTPS tunnels
- Custom subdomains, domains
- WebSocket support
- TLS pass-through tunnels
- Dashboard UI
- Webhook Forwarding
Since the server can be routing from hundreds of webhooks to millions of webhooks per minute, it's important to choose a correct size for the server.
Minimal requirements:
- 1 CPU
- 128 MB RAM
- 1GB Disk space
Recommended:
- 4 CPU
- 6 GB RAM
- 1GB disk space
To get a license key for self-hosted Webhook Relay version (Transponder) please email [email protected]. Proof-of-Concept trial licenses are available free of charge.
Various examples for deployment are available here: https://github.com/webhookrelay/transponder-deployment.
This is an example from https://github.com/webhookrelay/transponder-deployment/tree/master/webhook-forwarding.
First, clone repository:
git clone https://github.com/webhookrelay/transponder-deployment.git
cd webhook-forwarding
- 1.Create a new file
.env
- 2.Copy & paste contents of
.env.example
file to.env
and change the details such as admin username, password API key (key has to remain UUID format) and secret.
Option 1: No TLS (when your own firewall/load balancer does HTTPS termination)
If you don't need TLS in Transponder:
- Ensure that environment variables
CERT_PATH
,CERT_KEY_PATH
andMANAGED_DOMAINS
aren't set. Either remove them from the.env
file or edit thedocker-compose.yaml
to unset them. - Update
healthcheck
section in the docker-compose.yaml to use http:// instead of https:// - Set
RELAY_REQUIRE_TLS=false
in the agent to disable TLS for GRPC connections.
Alternatively, if you do need encryption for the agent and you are doing TLS termination in front of the Transponder, you can use
--ws
flag when running forward command:relay forward --ws -b my-bucket https://bin.webhookrelay.com/v1/webhooks/d1ea0a51-f317-4e8d-a641-067e96a46bc3
Option 2: TLS Configuration
For TLS configuration you can choose between self-signed certificates and the ones provided by Let's Encrypt.
For production instance, set CA_URL=https://acme-v02.api.letsencrypt.org/directory in your .env file. Although it's recommended to first try out your setup with staging CA so you don't hit Let's Encrypt rate limits.
Option 3: Let's Encrypt certificates (TLS-ALPN challenge)
TLS-ALPN challenge is nice to use with webhook forwarding because you don't need a wildcard cert and this method doesn't require 3rd credentials from a DNS provider. Transponder uses this method by default, so just set this environment variable:
MANAGED_DOMAINS=your-domain.com
Your server must be reachable from the Internet (by Let's Encrypt server).
Option 4: Using DNS challenge
It is recommended to use DNS challenge when you need a wildcard cert or your server is not reachable from the public Internet. Transponder supports Cloudflare as a DNS challenge provider. To use it instead of the TLS-ALPN challenge, set these additional variables:
CLOUDFLARE_EMAIL=your-cloudflare-account-email
CLOUDFLARE_API_KEY=your-cloudflare-api-key
This will ensure that during boot, Transponder will retrieve certificates for your server.
Option 5: Self-signed certificates
Get your certificates and place them into
certs/
directory next to this docker-compose.yaml file. Then, set these environment variables in the .env
file:CERT_PATH=./certs/your-domain.pem
CERT_KEY_PATH=./certs/your-domain-key.pem
To start the server:
docker-compose up -d
You can view server logs here:
docker-compose logs
Last modified 1yr ago