Hi Robert, first of all we would need to know which OS the remote servers are running. If it is (SuSE) Linux, you should at least have SSH access on port 22. Then you can tunnel all other applications through SSH (see "man ssh" and the "-L/-R" options. Installing VPN is more complicated and is (at least partly) dependent on whether the servers are behind a NAT-router or not. SSH and tunneling is more simple. You could run a VNC-server on the machines to access the graphical screen (make it listen on localhost only and tunnel port 5900 by SSH to get security+encryption also on VNC). If you are running Windows on the servers, one option is to install the Cygwin package (www.cygwin.com) and use the Cygwin SSH server for access. Then run TightVNC on localhost only and tunnel port 5900 by SSH for secure access. The nice thing about SSH is that you need only one port through your firewall(s)/router(s). Make sure each server has its own firewall and allow SSH access only from your IP. For "heartbeat" functionality, run a script on your server that pings all servers and writes an email if the ping times out. If ping (ICMP packages) are not able to reach the remote servers, you could run a script on the remote server to send an email every 5min. Use procmail on your site to process the incoming emails and notice you when one of the server stops sending them. HTH, Armin -- Am Hasenberg 26 office: Institut für Atmosphärenphysik D-18209 Bad Doberan Schloss-Straße 6 Tel. ++49-(0)38203/42137 D-18225 Kühlungsborn / GERMANY Email: schoech@iap-kborn.de Tel. +49-(0)38293-68-102 WWW: http://armins.cjb.net/ Fax. +49-(0)38293-68-50