One App for Your Whole Homelab

One app for your whole homelab: Proxmox, VMware and KVM in one place

A homelab starts with one box. Then there's a second node, a NAS, a Windows VM for the odd job, a couple of Linux guests and a test ESXi host someone was throwing out. Before long, keeping an eye on it all takes more windows than the lab has VMs. Here's how to pull those connections back into one place.

The tool sprawl

Think about what checking on a small lab can look like on a busy evening:

A browser tab per web interface: Proxmox VE on port 8006, the ESXi Host Client, maybe the vSphere Client, each with its own certificate warning and sign-in.
A terminal window per host, with the addresses and users kept in a text file or your memory.
A Remote Desktop file per Windows VM, scattered across the desktop.
A VNC viewer for the Linux guest whose network isn't up yet, plus the SSH tunnel you have to remember to start first.
A file client to download an ISO from one host and upload it to the next.

None of these tools is bad on its own. The cost is in the switching: finding the right window, remembering which port the KVM console is on, typing the same check into five terminals one after another. We wrote up 5 workflows that save time when you manage many servers for exactly those gaps.

One list, every kind of connection

RemoteAccessApp for Windows does remote desktop for your own PCs, and it's also a home for everything else you connect to. On its Connections page, a Proxmox VE node is an SSH host, its web interface is a web panel, the Windows VM is an RDP host and the KVM guest's console is a VNC host. They sit together in groups you choose, one per cluster or site, with tags like prod or backup to filter by, and the list follows you to every PC you sign in on. A Hyper-V host fits in too, over RDP and SSH on Windows Server or with the Agent on Windows 10 and 11; see how to manage Hyper-V hosts and VMs remotely.

Open any of them and it's a tab. A few things that make the difference in a lab:

Web interfaces open in a browser tab inside the app. It asks about a self-signed certificate once and remembers your answer, and Fill sign-in types the saved user name and password.
A KVM guest's VNC console goes through an SSH tunnel to its host, set once on the saved VNC host. libvirt can keep VNC on the host's own loopback address, never on your network.
Hosts sign in with SSH keys, and the app checks each host's key before it sends anything.
Tabs go side by side in up to eight panes, and a layout saves as a workspace you can reopen and reconnect in one go.

An evening in the lab, in one window

Here's how that busy evening goes with everything in one place.

Check the hosts

Open the lab workspace and everything comes back where you left it: the Proxmox VE web interface in one pane, a terminal on each node, and each node's Dashboard with live CPU, memory, disk and network graphs read over SSH. Nothing is installed on the hosts for that.

Patch everything

Your saved update-check script goes out with Run on hosts…: tick the nodes, run, and read each host's output and result in one list. One timed out? Run it again on just the ones that failed. For a whole evening of updates, backups and disk clean-up in order, follow the homelab maintenance night checklist.

Get a new ISO onto the hosts

The installer ISO is on one host and needed on another. A transfer tab copies it straight across, streaming through your PC without landing on your disk, with Verify comparing checksums at the end. Last night's backups go to the backup server the same way.

Fix the guest that won't boot

A Linux VM on the KVM server has no network after an update, so SSH is out. Its VNC console opens through the tunnel, and you're at its login prompt. Meanwhile the Windows VM that needs a reboot is one RDP tab away.

What it is, and what it isn't

It's worth being plain about this. RemoteAccessApp doesn't connect to the Proxmox VE or vSphere APIs, and there are no buttons to start, stop or snapshot a VM. You still do that in the platform's own web interface, which now opens in a tab, or with its own commands in a terminal. What changes is that the interface, the terminals, the consoles and the file copies are all in one app. Keep that web interface on your own network, though: stop exposing your Proxmox or ESXi web UI explains why, and the safer ways to reach it from outside.

A couple of limits

The dashboard reads Linux, macOS, FreeBSD and Windows hosts with PowerShell, so Proxmox VE and KVM servers yes, ESXi no. Web panels open from the PC you're on, so that PC needs to reach the address. When you're away, open a PC at home with RemoteAccessApp and use the web interface there, and the website can open your saved SSH hosts through one of your PCs, with no port forwarding either way.

Try it on your lab

The free plan covers SSH, SFTP, RDP, VNC and web panels, server-to-server copies, Run on hosts, the dashboard and split view, with up to 5 saved hosts and web panels and 3 open at once. A bigger lab needs Pro for unlimited hosts and password sync. The step-by-step guide for Proxmox, VMware and KVM hosts walks through the setup, including the VNC tunnel and the security basics, and the free homelab management tool page sums up everything the app covers in a lab. When you're ready, download RemoteAccessApp. More homelab posts and release round-ups are on the RemoteAccessApp blog.