This is the twentieth sixth part of the Availability Anywhere series. For your convenience you can find other parts in the table of contents in Part 1 – Connecting to SSH tunnel automatically in Windows

Over the years I improved my remote work setup significantly. This blog post summarizes what various approaches I took and how I configured my setup over the years. One note before moving on – I assume you don’t have any “hardware” but the computer (so no programmable boards, weird mobile devices, confidential hardware etc.).

Level 1

First approach is what most of us consider “remote work”. You just take your corporate laptop with you and you work remotely. You probably have a corporate VPN that lets you connect to the company’s resources from wherever you are.

Pros:

• You can do everything the same way you did while in the office

Cons:

• You can’t work from devices that are not onboarded with your corporate infrastructure – mobile phones, tablets, private laptops, VR goggles, etc.
• You need to take the corporate laptop with you anywhere you go
• You work from a device that is probably hot and loud working crazy on your office stuff (we all know the bloatware they install on the machines…)
• You can rarely pick your hardware, so your laptop is probably big and bulky (and yes, Macbook Air is big and bulky)
• You may not be able to connect to the VPN in some places due to weird networking conditions

While this is enough to actually do the work, I don’t like this approach. First, I always want to be able to be online (that doesn’t mean that I’m online all the time) no matter where I am and what I have on me. Specifically, I want to be able to access the infrastructure and do all my stuff using my mobile phone, private laptop, etc. I mean, I want to be able to do coding or video processing from my mobile phone while on a train (yes, I did that).

Second, I don’t like taking my corporate machine with me. This is especially troublesome when I need to travel for conferences for which I need to take more hardware with me (like 2 laptops and many mobile phones). Taking another laptop on the plane is just cumbersome. This is sometimes even dangerous depending on where you go and when they want to control your corporate machines. Not to mention, that your corporate policy may prohibit you from taking the corporate laptop to some places.

Third, I don’t like when I can’t pick my hardware. My laptop must be light and quiet, especially when I sit in a deckchair or lie down.

Level 1.5

Sometimes you cannot connect to the VPN while working remotely. This is due to weird networking, policy, or simply geolocation block.

You can fix that by getting a networking device that will connect to some other VPN and expose a tunnel for you. Typical solution is to get a router with built-in VPN. You can see this tutorial to learn how to do that.

However, I don’t recommend taking a router for that. Just get yourself a decent Windows x86 tablet, for instance Dell Venue 8 Pro and install SoftEther VPN. First, such a tablet is a “full Windows machine” so you can do whatever is needed to get connected (think about captive portals or weird passwords). Second, since this is a tablet, you can take it with you wherever you need.

Level 2

Let’s not bring the corporate machine with us at all. Get yourself a corporate virtual machine (typically called virtual desktop or VDI) and do all the work from it. Next, to work remotely, you just need to connect to the VDI from your device (which we’ll call road runner) using RDP + SSH. To do that, you may need to onboard your road runner with your corporate VPN. However, there are many solutions to work that around, so from now on we assume your road runner is not onboarded with the corporate bloatware.

Pros:

• You can do almost everything the same way you did while in the office
• You can work from your laptop
• You can take your hardware anywhere you wish

Cons:

• You may still be unable to work from mobile phones, tablets, VR goggles, etc.
• You may need to run video conferencing software on your road runner (which may not be possible)
• Your road runner may still get hot and loud when taking crazy video call with greenscreen effects
• You may not be able to do some corporate tasks – think about GPU-heavy things like video processing

This is much better now since we can connect from our road runner, so we can get a light laptop like Acer Swift 5 which is 1kg/2.2lb (your Macbook Air is at least 25% heavier).

When it comes to video conferences, they may be tricky. First, your webcam may not work over RDP. Second, RDP introduces noticeable audio delay. To fix that, you may need to run the conference software locally (I recommend doing that in browser). While it solves the problem, it also makes your road runner loud and hot.

Last but not least, if your company cannot prepare a VDI for you, you can create it on your own. Just use Sysinternal’s disk2vhd. Keep in mind it may cause some troubles with Active Domain and IdP in general, but it works.

Level 3

Let’s finally address the problem that we can’t work from any device. Let’s add a jump host. Get yourself a decent Windows machine and put it somewhere on the Internet. I generally recommend Hetzner (but whatever you choose, just get yourself a dedicated host). And BTW, choose Intel CPU instead of AMD (your virtual machines will thank you for that). Next, connect to that machine with plain RDP. This way, you can connect to it using any road runner – be it laptop, mobile phone, tablet, or whatever else. And since it can be a mobile phone, just get yourself a decent foldable. Yes, that really makes a difference when you’re working remotely.

Pros:

• You can do almost everything the same way you did while in the office
• You can work from nearly any device
• You can take your hardware anywhere you wish

Cons:

• You may need to run video conferencing software on your road runner (which may not be possible)
• Your road runner may still get hot and loud when taking crazy video call with greenscreen effects
• You may not be able to do some corporate tasks – think about GPU-heavy things like video processing
• You may have hard time connecting to the corporate VPN

When dealing with corporate VPN, use things like SSLH or FileProxy for avoiding VPN without split tunneling (also known as TCP over File System). There are many more tricks and improvements you can apply. I cover them in my talk.

Level 4

Let’s now deal with more devices and the GPU. I use two solutions for that: vSpatial and NoMachine.

First, vSpatial lets you connect to your jump host with browser and application for VR goggles. This way, you can work from basically any device you can think of. Another bonus is that vSpatial lets you forward audio and camera, so you can take your meetings from the jump host. However, as of today, vSpatial supports only 20 FPS for your webcam, so people will notice that something is off. We’ll deal with that in a second.

Second, NoMachine lets you connect to the jump host over VNC-like protocol which lets you use GPU easily. You can now do basically anything you can think of.

Pros:

• You can do everything the same way you did while in the office (assuming your VDI can do the things your corporate laptop could)
• You can work from any device
• You can take your hardware anywhere you wish

Cons:

• You may need to run video conferencing software on your road runner (which may not be possible)
• Your road runner may still get hot and loud when taking crazy video call with greenscreen effects
• You may have hard time connecting to the corporate VPN

Nothing stops you from having more jump hosts. For instance, you can host a dedicated Mac mini in Cyberlynk and connect to it.

Also, if you need more screens with your road runner, you can try portable monitor. You can also emulate screens with IddSampleDriver or its Rust version, or Better Display. This way you can literally move between machines with not a single window changing its position.

Level 5

Let’s finally deal with our road runners becoming loud and hot. We basically want to offload whole video processing to the jump host so that our device doesn’t need to encode/decode any video conferencing stuff.

To do that, use VDO.Ninja. This lets you “forward” your audio and camera to any jump host. Just use OBS or Splitcam on the jumphost to receive the video, apply any greenscreen effects you need, and forward it to the conference call.

Pros:

• You can do everything the same way you did while in the office (assuming your VDI can do the things your corporate laptop could)
• You can work from any device
• You can take your hardware anywhere you wish
• Your hardware stays cool and quiet no matter what you do

Cons:

• You may have hard time connecting to the corporate VPN

This is how my final setup looks like. I don’t do anything on my road runner. Nothing. I just connect to the jump host with RDP + vSpatial + NoMachine and I forward my audio + video with VDO.Ninja. No matter if I code, process videos, record stuff, attend conference call (or many of them), remove my webcam background, or anything else – my road runner has constant and predictable load. I can also switch to any other road runner easily.

Double-thin-client architecture

Yet another trick you can apply is what I call “double-thin-client” architecture. Instead of booting up your road runner natively, you can use native boot and get yourself a portable SSD drive like Samsung T7.

This way, you can install your operating system once, and carry it with you wherever you go. You just plug the drive to the USB, boot the operating system from the drive, and you have your environment up and running. You can then replace your road runner with another machine easily. I actually did that many times. My Windows installation survived like 4 different laptops already. Best thing is, you can simply clone the drive to another one when you get a new SSD, so you can upgrade your hardware in place with no failures.

You can use similar approach for your jump host. Do not install things locally. Just boot from VHD and this way you can easily take backup of your dedicated host.

Other improvements

There are many more things you can consider for improving your remote work. Some ideas include Bluetooth devices (obviously) and VNC server installed on a road runner, so you can walk around your home and control the device from your mobile phone. This can be useful when you’re already dialed into a call and you don’t want to rejoin from another device. Simply take your Bluetooth headset with you to another room and watch the screen of your road runner from a mobile phone.

Another idea is automatically capturing meeting notes. Since you take calls on your jump host, you can run some notetaker AI application that will automatically capture whatever you need and send it forward.

You can use Firefox with Multi-Account Containers and Tree Style Tab. They really make your work way faster. Too bad it’s just for Firefox.

You may also want to use VirtuaWin to have many desktops. I find it much better to use than “tasks” in Windows, mostly thanks to keyboard shortcuts. And if you need to run applications that need to actively interact with your desktop (like Puppeteer or UIPath), just use Desktops.

Tricks for mobile phones

You can also work on your mobile phone. First, you can get a silicone keyboard to type easily. This is really great and you can actually work from your mobile phone. I once travelled for two days with my mobile phone only and I was still able to do coding and debugging.

You can dial in over GSM. This may simplify the way you take online meetings.

Next, you can run many clones of one application with Multiple Accounts. This way, you can separate your corporate stuff from your personal one on your road runner.

You can virtualize mobile phone inside a mobile phone. Just consider applications like VMOS or Virtual Master – Android Clone. You can try Limbo x86 PC Emulator.

You can turn your mobile phone into a mobile workstation with Samsung DeX.

Short note on Apple devices

I sometimes get asked why I don’t use Apple devices. If you watch my conference recording, you can see that I always use Windows and Android. This is surprising to some people because they consider me a “power user” and yet it seems like I don’t use Apple devices. Let me give you some reasons.

First, I do use them. I really like my Mac with silicon chip as it’s really great CPU + GPU in one box. However, I don’t use it as a road runner for these reasons:

• It’s heavy. It’s over 25% heavier than my Windows road runner. While it’s not a big deal as it’s still relatively light, I just don’t want to carry additional kilograms
• It is loud and hot. I don’t like that it gets so hot when I typical stuff. This is especially irritating when working in bed
• It doesn’t support booting from VHD which I need for my public speaking stuff
• Most importantly, Macs do not support many screens easily. Right now, I have 5 displays on my desk (not counting the monitor one). When I travel, I often plug additional screens to my laptop. I just don’t accept that Macbook Air doesn’t handle 3 external screens

When it comes to iPhone, I have these reasons to prefer Android:

• iPhone doesn’t record calls. This is a major obstacle for which there is no easy workaround
• iPhone can’t run many instances of an app. I want to run them independently because I need to log in with multiple accounts. Some applications support that natively, but I need a generic solution
• Foldable phone is really a game changer
• I have some “sophisticated” applications running on my mobile phone, for instance web server and Node.js applications that automate things around text messages. I simply can’t have that on iPhone
• Many things are not available for iPhone, like some of my VPNs, port forwarding, etc. Android just works better

That’s it. I’ve been using iPhone for some time and it just doesn’t cut. For Macbook, I may use it as a road runner one day when it improves the hardware specification (sic!).