Headscale Deployment And Usage Guide: Mastering Tailscale's...

Headscale is an open-source server that works like Tailscale's control server. You can run it yourself instead of using Tailscale's hosted service. This gives you full control over your VPN network without device limits or subscription fees. Here's how to set it up and connect your devices.

Tailscale is a VPN built on WireGuard. It works like other mesh VPN tools such as Netmaker. Tailscale runs WireGuard in user space, while Netmaker uses kernel-space WireGuard. This means Tailscale has slightly lower performance than kernel-space solutions. But it's still much faster than OpenVPN and easier to use.

Tailscale is basically WireGuard made easier to use.

Tailscale has a free tier that works well for personal use or small teams. You can use it free as long as you stay under the device limit (around 20 devices per account - check their website for current limits). The free tier has some limits on advanced features like subnet routing, but it covers most basic needs. Most Tailscale client code is open source under the BSD license (except Windows and macOS GUI apps). You can find the source code in their GitHub repository.

The free tier works for most people. If you need more features, they have paid plans.

But what if you want full control, unlimited devices, and no subscription fees? That's where Headscale comes in.

Tailscale's control server is proprietary and has limits for free users. That's fair since it's how they make money. But the open-source community built an alternative: Headscale. It's become the main open-source option for self-hosted Tailscale setups.

Juan Font at the European Space Agency created Headscale. It's written in Go and released under the BSD license. Headscale copies most of Tailscale's control server features. You can run the whole coordination server yourself. This gives you full control over your network traffic and removes device limits. If you want to run your own secure VPN without restrictions, Headscale is a good choice.

If you want to get started fast, the Sealos App Store has one-click Headscale deployment. This is simple and needs almost no setup.

Click "Deploy on Sealos" to start. Sign in to your Sealos account, then click "Deploy Application." When it's done, click on the Headscale app's "Details" to see how to access it.

Source: Dev.to