[SOLVED] VMware VMRC style alternative

Is there (preferably open source) VMRC style remote access to guests? Not looking for RDP or VNC directly to guest, VMRC will connect to hypervisor and allow you to use guest desktop even if guest has no networking.

Use case is a bunch of old systems running as VMs with some hardware pass trough for old CNC gear. No networking and I don’t want to spend a bunch of time setting up new network, VLANs, firewalls, remote desktop… just looking to get it done in an hour.

I’ve played with ProxMox but as far as I can tell there is no functionality similar to VMRC, just directly remoting into guests.

Proxmox does have a VMRC alternative, it’s called SPICE. SPICE - Proxmox VE. You can use Virt-viewer to remotely connect using SPICE.

1 Like

That might be what I need, thanks I have no idea how I missed it. Especially after Broadcom deciding to drop free versions of ESXi to “streamline user experience”.

2 Likes

Both QEMU and Xen stacks offer VNC and SPICE directly to the video output, i.e. straight from boot, kind of like IPMI. These options should be available no matter which hypervisor and solution you end up with.

Keep in mind that VNC directly to the guest OS will have different feature set than VNC to the VM.

ProxMox did the trick. SPICE works reasonably well on Windows guests, on par with VMware VMRC, with an appropriate driver.

1 Like