All your ssh and database servers accessible directly from your Browser

This post was originally posted on the Border0.com blog here

Today we’re excited to welcome you to a new era of seamless infrastructure management and access. Meet the new Border0 client portal, a beautiful and efficient web interface that allows your users to quickly and easily discover all servers they have access to. And allow them to connect to your services using our web-based SSH and database clients!

All your infrastructure accessible from your browser, any time and anywhere.‍

Effortless Access and Exceptional design

With this new client portal, we offer your users effortless, one-click access to your servers, containers, and databases from any location and device. Our goal is to transform your infrastructure into easy-to-access apps via a unified hub.

‍When designing the client portal, we wanted to make sure that getting around the dashboard was intuitive and pleasant. The dashboard features app cards for each service, with easily distinguishable icons and details. It includes indicators for SSH, Database, HTTP services, and even specifics like Postgres, MySQL, or Docker containers on an ECS cluster. Frequently used services are at the top for quick access. We offer both a card and a list view and the choice between dark or light mode!‍

The search box at the top of the screen supports fuzzy search capabilities, so it’s easy to find that one server! Grouping of resources by provider, environment, and regions, and a socket type filter simplify navigation and help you quickly find the server you need. All these filtering, searching, and use of sections work nicely together, further optimizing the user experience.‍

So say goodbye to time-consuming logins or elusive resources. Our new client portal provides swift access to your infrastructure from anywhere. And it’s perfectly fine-tuned for mobile. So, when you’re on call, you can troubleshoot that service even while picking out your next bookshelf at Ikea — yes, I may know a thing or two about that!‍

The tech — Innovation Under the Hood

Underneath its user-friendly interface, this new client portal boasts impressive technological might. It operates completely within the user’s browser, leaning heavily on the power of WebAssembly (WASM). This allows us to integrate more complex elements, like TLS and SSH certificate requests, secure TLS tunnel setup, SSH clients, and database drivers — all of which are implemented using Go. Once initialized, the WASM code establishes a WebSocket tunnel to Border0’s infrastructure, from which everything proceeds as with a standard setup.

With the Go code compiled into WASM, a bit of JavaScript wizardry takes over, resulting in an easy-to-use, fully-functional Border0 client that operates directly from your browser.‍

But that’s not all — we’ve seized this opportunity to create an exceptional web-based database client that supports both MySQL and PostgreSQL targets through Border0. Think phpMyAdmin (anyone remember that?), but re-imagined!

Using the Border0 architecture and new client portal, you can now easily browse the data in your RDS databases, even if it runs in a private VPC, just using your browser.‍

Demo — Experience it for Yourself

Curious? Well good news, you can experience the new client portal right now on our demo tenant! Visit client.border0.com and log in to the ‘demo’ organization. The policy for this organization allows anyone with a Gmail account, or Microsoft email (@live.com, @outlook.com) to access its resources.‍

Once logged in with your Gmail or Microsoft account, you can explore various services, including SSH, databases, and HTTP services, such as a Grafana setup. Make sure to try the web-based SSH client and the web-based database clients for both Postgres and MySQL.‍

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Wrap up

In this blog, we looked at the newly introduced client portal. A super easy way for you and your team to discover and access your infrastructure. From here, you can easily access all your servers, including SSH and database resources, all without ever having to leave your browser, using your existing single-sign-on credentials, and without having to ever install anything.‍

Border0 doesn’t stop at merely enhancing accessibility; it hands security administrators the reins to monitor and control your infrastructure effectively. Our comprehensive policies allow for fine-grained control, enabling you to specify who has access and under which circumstances. Furthermore, our audit logs offer detailed insight into user activities, showing exactly who accessed what, when they did it, and the ability to replay SSH sessions or review the executed database queries.‍

Unlike many security solutions on the market, this powerful blend of visibility and control does not introduce unnecessary complexity for your end users. Border0 caters to all user preferences with a CLI client, a desktop client, and now a fully web-based client. All are intuitively designed, ensuring ease of use for your users and making them tools they’d willingly adopt for their efficiency and convenience.‍

Excited to try this for your own infra? Check out our fully featured free community edition, or schedule a demo and let us walk you through a custom demo; let’s geek out together 🤓