Remotely Access Developer Desktop Located At Home

Question

I'm looking for a way to remotely use desktop computer located at home from a laptop from any location over Internet.

The Setup:

• Windows with VirtualBox running several virtual machines (Linux for now).

Requirements:

• No need to remotely connect to Windows.
• There has to be a way to SSH into all those virtual hosts.
• One of hosts is Ubuntu which is my developer desktop, I need visual remote desktop connection to it.
• Setup should work with both Windows and Mac laptops.

Could you tell me which technologies and tools to use?

• What are tradeoffs when using each of them?
• Which part of the goal is solved by each of those tools?

Thank You!

Answer 1

Use bridged networking in VirtualBox, connect to your home router with OpenVPN (use OpenWRT for example for this). This way you will be able to access all your virtual machines.

Answer 2

Another option is to SSH into your Windows computer and then use Port Forwarding to connect to your other VMs. I personally use Bitvise SSH Server (it is a very good SSH server for Windows). It is free to use for Personal use.

You could also directly SSH into each of your VMs too. One approach to do this is to: 1. Set up each of your VMs as SSH servers. Use a different listening port for each VM. 2. Set up Port Forwarding from your router for each of your custom ports to each VM. So you can use 50022 for VM1, 50023 for VM2, etc. 3. Connect to your home's IP address using the specific port number and it will connect you directly to the VM.

If you have a dynamic IP address (most home Internet services do), you will need to set up a Dynamic DNS service so that you can keep track of when you your home IP address changes).