Connecting to server behind VPN with Heroku and Ruby

Question

I'm writing an application in Ruby/RoR that will be hosted on Heroku.

One of its requirements is that it connects to an (Active Directory) authentication server which is behind a Sonicwall VPN.

How can I establish this VPN authentication using Ruby to access this server?

Answer 1

Heroku is just a service built on top of EC2 that manages deployment using a linux env. You don't have root access on on which means you can connect out to any service using any TCP protocol. But you can only listen for HTTP connections. Unfortunately this rules out setting up VPNs and SSH tunnels. You can do this on Amazon EC2.