Accessing your labs using Strigo's Dynamic DNS

Let's say you're running a lab that's configured to expose a web interface to the public internet, for example, a Jenkins server UI. Since replacing the labs, or, in the case of on-demand, stop-starting them will most probably change the hostnames as well, your students will have to figure out the new hostname for each lab every time.

Strigo provides a simple solution to overcome such issues by providing a static hostname for each lab (per student) that never changes. What's even cooler, is that it resolves both public and private IPs, depending on where you access it from.

Each lab will be assigned a hostname that looks somewhat like so:

PtamQBumDADkqudmT-ECge4KYRDhd7AQz4r.labs.strigo.io

Let's say that your lab has the following parameters:

If you access PtamQBumDADkqudmT-ECge4KYRDhd7AQz4r.labs.strigo.io from the public internet, it will resolve to the Public IP 3.120.187.198, while accessing the same address from other labs will resolve to the Private IP 172.31.14.253.

This DNS address will never change for the same lab, meaning that:

If you use SSL certificates to access the lab's web interface, you don't have to renew them every time the lab is replaced or stop-started.
You can create a single, self-signed certificate for *.labs.strigo.io and always use it to access Strigo labs. No need to recreate certificates ever again.
If your users need to access one lab from another, you can ask them to use the Dynamic DNS when configuring lab services, thus keeping a static configuration.
If your students use a VPN or a corporate firewall, you won't have to whitelist specific IPs or the Public DNS entries.
Since the same address resolves both private and public IPs, your students won't have to remember different addresses when using their labs.

We intend on using this functionality to bring an even more robust experience to lab communication in the future.