Access Server Link: A Self-Hosted VPN for AWS, Azure, and GCP Deployed in Minutes

For years, deploying a self-hosted VPN has come with a familiar checklist: SSH into a Linux box, wrestle with DNS records, hunt for credentials, and convince your team to click past a self-signed certificate warning. Secure remote access is a must for any modern business — but the setup curve for a self-hosted VPN server has felt anything but modern.

VPN-as-a-Service alternatives moved past that experience long ago. The trade-off was control: you got a polished onboarding flow, but you handed over your data plane in exchange — a non-starter for organizations with strict data sovereignty, compliance, or privacy requirements.

Today, we’re closing that gap.

Access Server Link is a new self-hosted VPN for AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform that delivers a cloud-orchestrated deployment and management experience. It pairs the click-through simplicity of a SaaS product — like CloudConnexa — with the data ownership of self-hosting. No SSH. No manual DNS. No certificate warnings. No surrendered control.

Alongside this launch, we’re refreshing the home for managing your OpenVPN Access Server deployments: the Access Server Portal is now the Access Server Hub — a centralized place to deploy, monitor, and access your VPN servers.

How Self-Hosted VPN Deployment Differs from Access Server Link

Self-hosting a VPN has always been the right choice for organizations in high-compliance industries that must maintain strict data privacy, data sovereignty, or adherence to regulations like HIPAA, SOC 2, or GDPR. But getting there has historically been a hurdle for IT admins without dedicated Linux and DNS expertise. Proof-of-concepts stall. Trials drag from minutes into days. Setup curves feel dated next to SaaS alternatives.

Access Server Link removes that friction without asking you to give up the data plane. VPN tunnel traffic still flows directly between your users and your VPN server — only the web UI is proxied through OpenVPN’s managed infrastructure. The admin interface never has to face the public internet, and your organization keeps full ownership of how user traffic moves.

That’s the heart of why we created Access Server Link: the power of self-hosting with the simplicity of VPN-as-a-Service.

How to Deploy a Self-Hosted VPN with Access Server Link

VPN deployment happens entirely from your browser. Sign in to Access Server Hub, choose Access Server Link from the installation menu, and the guided flow takes over. You’ll be asked for three things:

• A hostname (your own custom subdomain) for your VPN server
• Your cloud provider — AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud Platform — and a region
• An admin password

That’s it. From there, you confirm and deploy on your chosen cloud provider using a preconfigured template, save your credentials, and finish the remaining steps in the provider’s console. When your Access Server Link comes online, your Admin and Client Web UIs are instantly accessible — complete with a trusted SSL certificate and DNS record already in place.

No certificate warnings. No manual DNS records. No credential hunt.

And if your public IP address ever changes, Access Server Link detects it and automatically updates the OpenVPN-managed domain. The admin URL stays the same. The VPN endpoint your users connect to stays the same — no new client profiles required.

You can view our quick start guide for Access Server Link for step-by-step instructions.

Managing Your VPN from Access Server Hub

Once your OpenVPN Access Server is live, the My Access Servers page in Access Server Hub gives you a centralized view of:

• Live server status
• Server details and configuration
• Subscription usage
• One-click access to both the Admin and Client Web UIs

The Admin Web UI is proxied through Access Server Hub, which means the admin interface never has to face the public internet. This is a meaningful security improvement over traditional self-hosted VPN setups where the management port must be reachable from an external network.

Self-Hosted Control, SaaS-Style Simplicity

It’s worth being precise about what Access Server Link does and doesn’t change.

What’s new: Deployment, the management portal, the public identity of your server (hostname, DNS, SSL certificate), and the path to the admin UI are all cloud-orchestrated.

What’s unchanged: Your VPN tunnel traffic. It flows directly between your users and your VPN server — not through OpenVPN’s infrastructure. You still own your data plane. You still control what happens to user traffic. The performance characteristics of self-hosting are fully preserved.

This isn’t a SaaS VPN with a self-hosted label. It’s self-hosted infrastructure with a SaaS-style front door. To compare OpenVPN’s products and find the right fit, see our product comparison page.

Who Access Server Link Is Built For

Access Server Link is designed for teams looking for a business VPN that doesn’t compromise on data ownership. Specifically, it’s built for three kinds of teams:

• First-time VPN admins who want a production-ready, self-hosted VPN without becoming experts in DNS, SSL certificates, or Linux administration.
• Buyers evaluating VPN alternatives who want to move from proof-of-concept to working secure remote access in minutes — so the conversation can shift to feature fit instead of setup.
• Compliance-conscious IT leaders who need SaaS-style ease but can’t hand over the data plane for privacy, data sovereignty, or regulatory reasons (HIPAA, SOC 2, GDPR).

Initial Release: What to Know

We’re shipping the first release of Access Server Link with a focused scope:

• One Access Server Link per account in this release.
• Standalone only — clustering isn’t supported yet.
• Available on AWS, Azure, and GCP only at launch.
• No migration from existing Access Server deployments yet. Access Server Link is for new deployments.

Multi-server support, clustering, and migration are on the roadmap.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is Access Server Link?

Access Server Link is OpenVPN’s self-hosted VPN for AWS, Azure, and GCP. It combines a guided, browser-based VPN deployment experience with the data ownership of self-hosting — your VPN tunnel traffic flows directly between your users and your server, not through OpenVPN’s infrastructure. Learn more about what OpenVPN Access Server is.

Which cloud providers does Access Server Link support?

Access Server Link supports Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform (GCP) at launch.

How long does it take to deploy a self-hosted VPN with Access Server Link?

Most admins are online in minutes. The guided flow in Access Server Hub asks for a hostname, your cloud provider and region, and an admin password — then deploys via a preconfigured cloud template, with DNS and a trusted SSL certificate pre-configured.

Is Access Server Link a SaaS VPN?

No. Only the web UI (Admin and Client portals) is proxied through OpenVPN’s managed infrastructure. Your VPN tunnel traffic flows directly between your users and your VPN server, so you retain full data ownership and self-hosted performance. See how it compares on our product comparison page.

Can I migrate my existing Access Server deployment to Access Server Link?

Not in this release. Access Server Link is currently for new deployments only — there’s no migration path from existing OpenVPN Access Server installations yet. Migration is on the roadmap.

What happens if my server’s public IP address changes?

Access Server Link automatically detects IP changes and updates the OpenVPN-managed domain used for both the Admin Web UI URL and the VPN endpoint. Your admin URL stays the same, and end users keep connecting with the same VPN endpoint — no new client profiles required.

Get Started with Access Server Link

If you’ve been putting off a self-hosted VPN because the setup felt like more work than it was worth, Access Server Link is built for you. Sign in to Access Server Hub and you’ll be online in minutes.

Ready to see pricing? Visit the Access Server pricing page.

Self-hosting just got easier. Your data plane is still yours.