Zoraxy in Docker with Portainer and Nginx as examples

Prepare host-machine

In this small guide I want to show you how to get started with Zoraxy in a docker container and connect it with other services like Portainer or Nginx.

I assume you already have docker installed on your system and added your user to the docker group with sudo usermod -aG docker $USER (see Docker.com for instruction)

We will put all the services we need in a separate network called zoraxynet

Login as a normal user and run:

docker network create --subnet 172.25.0.0/16 zoraxynet

It returns a a longer UUID, somthing like e5ecd5bf4e4cce99a252d3d6d3d0bb12e1b65b8daf1e47d9cb7e6a75ab3ae357 This has created our network and we can use it later in Portainer to attach more containers.

Next we will start Zoraxy in a container. Create a folder and change into it

mkdir zoraxy && cd zoraxy

Now we create a config-folder and a docker-compose.yml

mkdir config && nano docker-compose.yml

Put in these lines:

services:
  zoraxy:
    image: zoraxydocker/zoraxy:latest
    container_name: zoraxy
    restart: unless-stopped

    ports:
      - 80:80
      - 443:443
      - 8005:8000/tcp

     volumes:
       - ./config:/opt/zoraxy/config/
       - /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock
       - /etc/localtime:/etc/localtime:ro

     environment:
       PORT: "8000"
       FASTGEOIP: "true"

     networks:
       zoraxynet:

networks:
  zoraxynet:
    external: true

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The networks: tells docker to put Zoraxy in our zoraxynet-network and give it an IP address external: true tells docker, to use our already existing network and not to create one with the same name, which would fail.

Run docker compose up -d to start the container.

Test in your browser:

IP-of-your-server:8005

In my case: 192.168.0.60:8005

Choose a username and a strong password, after you clicked confirm, you can login.

Change the inbound port to 443, click apply and enable the three buttons below to redirect all HTTP to HTTPS requests.

Zoraxy now listens on port 80 and 443 on your system and can redirect all traffic to HTTPS.

---

Setup certificates:

Click on "TLS / SSL Certificates" and scroll down to "Certificate Authority (CA) and Auto Renew (ACME)"

Choose your prefered CA (Let´s Encrypt in this example), fill in your email-address and click on "Save settings"

Click on "Open ACME Tool" and press the switch on the top (Enable Certificate Auto Renew)

Autonrenew is now active!

We are done here for the moment, next we will setup Portainer. Switch back to the command line.

Setup Portainer

Create a new folder named portainer in your favorite directory and change into it:

mkdir portainer && cd portainer

Create a data folder for the configuration:

mkdir data

Create a docker-compose.yml for portainer:

nano docker-compose

Fill in these lines:

services:
    portainer-ce:
        networks:
           zoraxynet:
        ports:
            - 9000:9000
        container_name: portainer
        restart: always
        volumes:
            - /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock
            - ./data:/data
        image: portainer/portainer-ce:latest
networks:
  zoraxynet:
    external: true

Start it with docker compose up -d

Test in your browser:

IP-of-your-server:9000

In my case: 192.168.0.60:9000

You can now use portainer as usual.

Setting up Portainer over HTTPS on a (sub)domain

Login into Zoraxy and go to "Create proxy rule"

"Matching Keyword / Domain" is your (sub)domain, "Target IP Address or Domain Name with port" is the containername:port (portainer:9000)

Port 9000 is the HTTP port of portainer, but why HTTP and not HTTPS? Portainer runs locally and is reached by Zoraxy via HTTP (internal traffic). Zoraxy handles all certificates for us and manages secure connections (external traffic)

It works like this:

Portainer via HTTP -> Zoraxy then adds SSL -> Internet

No extra certificates, no extra configuration. Always use the plain HTTP port as proxy host in Zoraxy. Zoraxy takes care of the rest.

Click on "Create Endpoint" and in the rightdown-corner Zoraxy asks if you want to create a certificate. Press okay and now you have a valid cert.

Check if Portainer runs with HTTPS:

Navigate to your site in your browser:

We have successfully reached Portainer via HTTPS.

Adding more containers

Lastly I show you, how to connect a service in Portainer and add it to Zoraxynetwork and make it available via HTTPS. I use NGINX in this example, but it will work with any other service.

Login into Portainer and go to your containers, now click on the name of your container (nginx in my case)

Scroll down to "Connected networks" and click on "Select a network". Choose "zoraxynet" and click on join network.

That´s it for the part of Portainer!

Back to Zoraxy, again go to "Create Proxy Rules"

Fill in your domain and the target IP is "nginx:80" (Containername:Port-inside-container)

"Create Endpoint" and click on okay in the right corner for a certificate.

Let´s see if it works:

Yes, Nginx over HTTPS. Easy attached via Portainer to our network and served via Zoraxy.