Apache Guacamole VPS Hosting

About Apache Guacamole

Apache Guacamole is a clientless remote desktop gateway that supports standard protocols like VNC, RDP, and SSH. Accessible through a web browser, it allows users to securely access their systems from anywhere without the need for client software.

The Bitnami Guacamole v1 Stack includes Apache Tomcat, MySQL, and other dependencies, enabling fast and easy deployment on your VPS with minimal configuration.

• Clientless remote access via any modern web browser.
• Supports RDP, VNC, and SSH protocols.
• No plugins or client installation required.
• Secure and encrypted remote desktop sessions.
• Bitnami stack ensures fast and easy setup.

Running Apache Guacamole on a VPS: a practical guide

Guacamole gives your team remote desktop access from a browser: RDP for Windows machines, VNC and SSH for the rest, with nothing to install on the user’s side. Here is what it needs from a server, which plan to start with, and how to avoid the problems people usually hit in the first week.

What Guacamole needs from the server

Three parts run on the VPS. guacd connects to your remote machines and translates RDP, VNC and SSH into the Guacamole protocol; this is where most of the CPU goes. The web application runs on Java (Tomcat in this image) and serves the browser client and the login screen. MySQL stores users, connections and permissions.

Load grows with the number of sessions open at the same time and with what happens on screen. An SSH terminal is light. A Windows desktop over RDP, with video or frequent full-screen redraws, is the heaviest case. The number of simultaneous sessions matters far more than the number of user accounts.

Which plan to start with:

• 1 vCPU, 2 GiB RAM, 30 GiB: trying it out, a single admin, $4/mo
• 2 vCPU, 4 GiB RAM, 60 GiB: a small team, a few sessions at once, mostly SSH and VNC, $8/mo
• 4 vCPU, 8 GiB RAM, 120 GiB: a team of 10-20 with regular RDP sessions, $20/mo
• 8 vCPU, 16 GiB RAM, 240 GiB: many simultaneous RDP desktops, session recording, $40/mo

Treat these as starting points. Watch CPU during your busiest hour: if guacd keeps a core busy, move up a plan. Resizing keeps your data, and a free snapshot before the change gives you a way back. If you record sessions, size the disk for the recordings, not for Guacamole itself.

Where to put it

Every screen update travels from the remote machine to guacd and on to the browser, so latency is what users feel. Put the VPS close to the machines you connect to, or close to your users if the machines are spread out. We run servers in 14 locations across the US, Canada, the UK, Germany and France, for example Ashburn, Frankfurt and London.

Getting started

1. Deploy the Apache Guacamole image from this page. The server is ready in about a minute.
2. Open http://your-vps-ip/guacamole/ and sign in as guacadmin.
3. Change the guacadmin password straight away, create your own administrator, then disable or delete guacadmin. The default account is the first thing scanners try.
4. Put the login page behind HTTPS with a Let’s Encrypt certificate before anyone uses it over the internet.
5. Turn on two-factor sign-in: Guacamole has an official TOTP extension.
6. Add your connections (RDP, VNC or SSH) and assign them to users or groups.

This image ships Guacamole 1.5.3; the current upstream release is 1.6.0. Update the server components after deployment, especially before connecting to VNC servers you do not control: releases fix security issues in the code that talks to remote machines.

Tuning and common problems

• RDP connection fails or shows a black screen. Usually the security mode. Set the connection’s security to match the Windows host (NLA in most cases), and allow a self-signed certificate on the RDP host if it has no trusted one.
• The desktop feels slow. Keep wallpaper, themes and font smoothing off on RDP connections (they are off by default) and lower the colour depth for remote sites with poor connections.
• Disk fills up. Session recordings grow quickly. Put them on a separate path, rotate them, or size the plan for them.
• Behind a reverse proxy, sessions drop. Guacamole prefers WebSocket and falls back to plain HTTP. Make sure the proxy passes WebSocket upgrades.
• Exposure. Open only HTTPS to the internet. The RDP, VNC and SSH ports of the machines behind Guacamole should not be reachable from outside; use the INET.WS cloud firewall to keep it that way.

FAQ

Do users need to install anything?
No. Guacamole works in any modern browser; the remote session is drawn in HTML5.

Can I connect to Windows desktops?
Yes, over RDP. Windows licensing on the machines you connect to stays your responsibility.

How do I upgrade safely?
Take a snapshot first (snapshots are free), upgrade, and roll back from the snapshot if something breaks.

Credentials for Apache Guacamole v1 by Bitnami on VPS

After deployment, access Guacamole through:

• Web interface: http://your-vps-ip/guacamole/
• Username: guacadmin
• Password: set during installation or default: guacadmin

Documentation

• Apache Guacamole Official Documentation
• Bitnami Community Support

SSH / SFTP / SCP Connection

Use the following credentials to connect to your VPS:

• SSH Host: your-vps-ip
• Port: 22
• Username: bitnami
• Private Key / Password: (available in your VPS dashboard)

Connect securely via terminal, PuTTY, or WinSCP for management and file transfers.

Disclaimer:

This VPS image includes Apache Guacamole v1 preinstalled via Bitnami, provided as-is. All trademarks and logos belong to their respective owners. Apache Guacamole is licensed under the Apache License 2.0. Ensure your deployment is secured and up to date before production use.