A tablet beside your server.

A phone is useful for a quick check. Managing storage, reading logs or keeping a terminal open asks for more room. A tablet offers that space while remaining portable enough to use beside equipment, away from a desk or across a private network.

The companion also needs to stay connected to the server’s own state. A second management system would add another place to reconcile containers, virtual machines and backup jobs. We built around the dashboard and access model already present in Eight.ly OS.

Eight.ly OS users who want a larger mobile control surface for storage, applications, virtual machines and backups.

The companion covers real-time system metrics, container controls, logs and statistics, application deployment, virtual machines and storage pools. It also includes access to Nova, system-monitoring dashboards and backup management.

A web terminal supports persistent sessions, so a terminal’s useful context can survive leaving and returning to it. The setup flow asks for a server URL and an API key created in the operating system’s security settings. Credentials use secure on-device storage.

The tablet connects to an existing Eight.ly OS server. Network access can be local or provided through an established private-network connection or secure tunnel. The app does not replace the server and does not claim to make an unreachable machine remotely accessible.

The interface exposes the server’s dashboard capabilities in a tablet companion. That keeps the work attached to the operating system people already manage, while using the screen size for denser controls and longer-running tasks.

The hard boundary is access. Server credentials belong in secure device storage, and a useful remote interface must be honest about whether the machine can be reached. Containers, storage and terminals also carry more operational consequence than a read-only status screen.

A control surface this broad also has to stay aligned with the operating system. Container actions, storage information and backup controls should reflect the same server state wherever someone opens them. We are keeping the companion in the lab while its distribution develops.