Cloudflare Tunnels: High Availability Setup

This comprehensive guide covers setting up Cloudflare Tunnels with ingress rules for both traditional web services and Docker containers, including high-availability (HA) configurations.

Prerequisites

• Cloudflare account with your domain added
• cloudflared installed (or Docker image)
• Local services or Docker services running

1. Authenticate and Create Tunnel

# Login and authenticate with Cloudflare
cloudflared login

# Create a tunnel
cloudflared tunnel create my-tunnel

Note the Tunnel ID and credentials JSON path.

2. Ingress Configuration

Create ~/.cloudflared/config.yml (for host services) or mount in Docker (for containerized services):

tunnel: <TUNNEL_ID>
credentials-file: /etc/cloudflared/<TUNNEL_ID>.json

ingress:
  # Normal web service (running on host)
  - hostname: web.example.com
    service: http://localhost:8080
  
  # Docker services
  - hostname: app.example.com
    service: http://web:80
  - hostname: api.example.com
    service: http://api:5000
  
  # Default fallback
  - service: http_status:404

• localhost points to host services
• Docker service names point to containers in the same network

3. Running the Tunnel

Option 1: Host Service

cloudflared tunnel run my-tunnel

Option 2: Docker Service

Use Docker Compose:

services:
  cloudflared:
    image: cloudflare/cloudflared:latest
    container_name: cloudflared
    depends_on:
      - web
      - api
    networks:
      - app-network
    volumes:
      - ./config.yml:/etc/cloudflared/config.yml
    restart: unless-stopped

docker-compose up -d cloudflared

4. High-Availability (HA) Setup

HA ensures services remain available if one Cloudflared instance or node fails.

Step 1: Share Tunnel Credentials

Copy the JSON credentials file to all nodes.

Step 2: Deploy Cloudflared on Each Node

• Use same config.yml
• Ensure Docker service names or host services are reachable
• Use Docker Compose or systemd to run Cloudflared

Step 3: Load Balancing

• Configure Cloudflare Load Balancer
• Add HA nodes as origin pools
• Use health checks to automatically failover

5. Useful Commands

cloudflared tunnel list
cloudflared tunnel route dns <TUNNEL_NAME> example.com
cloudflared tunnel logs my-tunnel
cloudflared tunnel delete my-tunnel

For Docker:

docker exec -it cloudflared cloudflared tunnel list
docker exec -it cloudflared cloudflared tunnel logs my-tunnel

References

• Cloudflare Tunnels & Ingress
• Cloudflare Load Balancing
• Docker Compose Networking

This combined MDX doc now supports:

1. Normal host-based web services (localhost)
2. Dockerized services using service/container names
3. HA setup with multiple nodes
4. Commands and references