ZeroTier Tutorial: Secure Remote Access to Home Assistant & Ubuntu Server + Desktop

For a long time I have checked for a good solution to reach my servers at home. My thoughts now have finalized in the VPN solution Zero Tier(ZT) where I reach Ubuntu desktop with "RDP" and Ubuntu server with "ssh". The ZT solution also works great with the Home Assistant(HA) browser access and the HA Mobile App.

Until now I have used remote.it but ZT will manage all of my network resources as if they were on the same LAN.

The Ubuntu desktop installation is running a Linux KVM with HA and a Ubuntu server Lite guests.  Setup here.

ZeroTier Account

Go to https://www.zerotier.com/ and create a free account with this guide.

Below picture shows the members in my network.

Home Assistant 

In HA go to "Settings => Add-ons => Add-on store" and search for "zerotier" and install.  

Now you have to activate a client to access HA and as you see above I have installed the ZT app on both my iPad and iPhone. Other supported platforms.

To access the HA installation in a browser from, in my case, the activated iPad I just use the URL  "http://192.168.192.9:8123" and log on.

If you prefer the HA app create a "new server" with the above URL.

Ubuntu server or desktop

Install ZT, on the Ubuntu desktop, with "curl -s https://install.zerotier.com | sudo bash" and activate with "sudo zerotier-cli join "Your_Network_ID""

As said, in the beginning of this post, I'm using Microsofts RDP client to access the desktop. The RDP server in Ubuntu is already installed so you just have to activate it which is described in this post.

The solution for the MS RDP client access problem with "Error code 0x207" for Apple clients is also mentioned in the post.