Remote.it Docker FAQ

Developers Docker & Kubernetes
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Introduction

Welcome to the Remote.It Docker Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) document. This FAQ is designed to provide answers to common queries regarding the Remote.It Docker software products.

1. Getting Started

Remote.It has two Docker based products:

2. What is the difference between Remote.It Agent and Remote.It Docker Extension?

The Remote.It Agent product is the Remote.It Device Package running inside a docker container. It is no different than the Remote.It Device Package installed directly onto your IoT device or Cloud server.

The Remote.It Docker Extension is the Remote.It Device Package running inside a docker container but it also contains a node application that will automatically manage connections to other containers. When running on your local Docker Desktop as a Docker Extension the Remote.It services it automatically creates allows you to share your container services with other developers. When running on Docker Daemons in a Cluster (Docker Container) the Remote.It services it automatically creates allows you to share your “environment” services with your Developers without opening any ports.

3. When should I use Remote.It Agent and when should I use Remote.It Docker Extension?

The Remote.It Agent is ideal for creating Remote.It jumpboxes on devices that support Docker. In this scenario you are concerned with connecting to services that reside on other servers that are reachable by the Docker host. A good example of this would be connecting to a cloud database server on a private network from your local desktop. You could setup a Remote.It Jumpbox in the cloud that can reach the database, create a service to connect to that database:port, and then connect from your local desktop to the database service using Remote.It Desktop.

The Remote.It Docker Extension has two scenarios for usage. The first is running it as a Docker Extension from the Docker Extension Marketplace. This is used when you want to share your container services with other Remote.It users. A good example of this would be development teams working on Docker microservices and they want to give access to a container running on their local Desktop to another developer. The second scenario is where you take the Remote.It Docker Extension and run it on a Docker cluster just like other Docker containers. For example, if you had an ECS cluster on AWS then could run the Remote.It Docker Extension container on each instance in the cluster. As containers get deployed any ports they define will automatically be created as a Remote.It Service. This would give developers access to containers running on ECS in AWS without opening any inbound ports.

4. How is security maintained with the Docker agent?

The Remote.It Docker products use encrypted tunnels to establish Peer to Peer connections between devices. This is a zero trust connection with authentication and authorization between users and devices with connections supported at Layer 3 of the OSI model.

The Remote.It principles of security follow the recognized security principles of “AIC” or Availability, Integrity, and Confidentiality. One of the most important features of the Remote.It system is the complete elimination of open ports.