I built an app to offer a client of the company I work for that I deployed to Firebase. It uses Firebase storage for retrieving files as well as the realtime database. It's actually just the front-end portion of a two-app suite I made; the backend portion is used by an admin for uploading files, checking data, etc --- which data then becomes available to view over the frontend. Both use firebase.
It turns out the devices that would need to access the app (tablets mostly) are inside of an extranet with a server that can establish VPN connections only. Now I'm being asked how I can build the app so these devices can access the app.
I don't know much about the inner-workings of Firebase but it seems to me I may have couple of options:
1) Figure out how to make the FB database accessible over VPN (preferable)
2) Reconfigure the app to use something like MongoDB. Instead of deploying on a remote server, let the on-site server service the devices using the app. Send files that are needed by the server via FTP over the VPN, then process these files on-site. Problem: I'm using a Mac and the on-site server uses Windows. It will be a pain to install things on a Windows machine remotely, let alone set up the VPN.
Any ideas? I'm sure there are parts of this question where I've made wrong assumptions --- I've never needed to do things over a VPN before.