Install cloudflared

Argo Tunnel requires the installation of a lightweight server-side daemon, cloudflared, to connect your infrastructure to Cloudflare. cloudflared is an open source projectOpen external link maintained by Cloudflare.

Releases can be found on GitHubOpen external link. Downloads are available as standalone binaries or packages like Debian and RPM.

​Linux

​Docker

A Docker image of cloudflared is available on DockerHubOpen external link.

​macOS

You can install cloudflared on macOS systems via Homebrew:

$ brew install cloudflare/cloudflare/cloudflared

Alternatively, you can download the latest Darwin amd64 release directly.

​Windows

Once cloudflared is installed:

1. Navigate to the Downloads folder.
2. Right-click on the ZIP folder and select Extract All to extract the executable.
3. Next, open PowerShell.
4. Navigate to the same Downloads folder.
5. Run the cloudflared.exe executable as an administrator to confirm the installation, replacing the path in the example below with the specifics of your directory:

PS C:\Users\Administrator\Downloads\cloudflared-stable-windows-amd64> .\cloudflared.exe --version

The command above should output the version of cloudflared if successfully installed.

​Updating cloudflared

You can update cloudflared by running the following command.

cloudflared update

The update will cause cloudflared to restart which would impact traffic currently being served. You can perform zero-downtime upgrades by using Cloudflare's Load Balancer product or by using multiple cloudflared instances.

​Updating with Cloudflare Load Balancer

We recommend this option if you are currently using Cloudflare's Load Balancer product with your Argo Tunnel deployment.

1. Install a new instance of cloudflared and create a new Argo Tunnel.
2. Configure the instance to point traffic to the same locally-available service as your current, active instance of cloudflared.
3. Add the address of the new instance of cloudflared into your Load Balancer pool as priority 2.
4. Swap the priority such that the new instance is now priority 1 and monitor to confirm traffic is being served.
5. Once confirmed, you can remove the older version from the Load Balancer pool.

​Updating with multiple cloudflared instances

1. Install a new instance of cloudflared and create a new Argo Tunnel.
2. Configure the instance to point traffic to the same locally-available service as your current, active instance of cloudflared.
3. In the Cloudflare DNS dashboard, replace the address of the current instance of cloudflared with the address of the new instance. Save the record.
4. Remove the now-inactive instance of cloudflared.

​Running multiple instances in Windows

Windows systems require services to have a unique name and display name. You can run multiple instances of cloudflared by creating cloudflared services with unique names.

First, install and configure cloudflared. Next, create a service with a unique name and point to the cloudflared executable and configuration file.

sc.exe create <unique-name> binPath='<path-to-exe>' --config '<path-to-config>' displayname="Unique Name"

Proceed to create additional services with unique names. You can now start each unique service.

sc.exe start <unique-name>

​Deprecated versions

Cloudflare currently supports all versions of cloudflared. Starting on March 20, 2021, Cloudflare will no longer support versions released prior to 2020.5.1.

All features available in versions released prior to 2020.5.1 are available in current versions. Breaking changes unrelated to feature availability may be introduced that will impact versions released prior to 2020.5.1.