After nearly four decades in systems administration and DevOps — including stints at IBM and Disney — I’ve managed a lot of infrastructure. Racks of servers, sprawling networks, machines spread across time zones. The tools we used were powerful, expensive, and designed for teams.
Then I left enterprise. Now I run a home lab with a handful of Linux boxes, a NAS, a Raspberry Pi or two, and a Mac Mini acting as a server. Nothing exotic. But the same problems I had at IBM still show up at 11pm when something goes quietly offline and I’m nowhere near a desk.
I wanted one app on my iPhone that could tell me what was happening on my network. Not a cloud dashboard with per-seat pricing. Not a terminal emulator with no context. Something purpose-built for the person who runs a small fleet of machines they actually own.
So I built Netsolver.
The problem with existing tools
Enterprise RMM tools — NinjaRMM, ConnectWise, Atera — are genuinely excellent if you’re managing hundreds of endpoints for paying clients. But they start at per-agent pricing that makes no sense for eight machines in your basement. The onboarding alone assumes you have an IT team.
On the other end, there are SSH clients. Good ones. I’ve used them for years. But an SSH client is a blank terminal. It doesn’t know what’s on your network, it doesn’t alert you when something goes down, and it doesn’t integrate with the rest of your phone.
There’s a gap between “full enterprise RMM” and “just SSH.” That gap is exactly where most home lab operators and small businesses live. That’s what Netsolver is for.
What it does
LAN scanning that actually tells you something
When you open Netsolver, it scans your local network and finds every device. But it doesn’t just list IP addresses — it probes each host for running services. SSH on port 22. SMB on 445. DNS on 53. RDP on 3389. MySQL on 3306.
The result is an immediate picture of your network. You can filter hosts by detected service — tap “SSH” and see every machine you can log into. Tap “RDP” and see your Windows boxes. This is information I used to piece together from nmap output and spreadsheets. Now it’s on my phone in seconds.
SSH with saved commands
Connecting to a host takes one tap. You can run any command and see the output. But where it gets useful is saved commands — per-host shortcuts for the things you run all the time. df -h / to check disk. uptime to see load. systemctl status nginx to check a service.
On iPad, saved commands sit in a persistent panel alongside the terminal. On iPhone, they live in a strip above the keyboard. No more retyping the same commands every session.
Agent deployment and monitoring
This is where Netsolver goes beyond an SSH client.
You can deploy a lightweight monitoring agent to any Linux or Mac host directly from the app. One tap — Netsolver connects via SSH, uploads the agent, and installs it as a system service. The agent phones home and starts reporting CPU, memory, and disk usage.
You set the thresholds. CPU above 85%? Disk above 90%? The agent fires a push notification to your iPhone via APNs. No polling, no background refresh, no battery drain. The server tells your phone something is wrong.
Alerts that actually do something
Here’s the part that genuinely surprised me when I built it.
iOS Shortcuts integration means an alert isn’t just a notification — it can trigger an action. When a monitored host hits a CPU threshold, Netsolver can fire a Shortcut. That Shortcut can send you a message on a specific channel, log the event to a spreadsheet, kick off a webhook, or run any automation you’ve already built on your phone.
I’ve worked with monitoring systems that cost thousands of dollars a month and didn’t have this kind of flexibility. The fact that it’s available to a home lab operator for the price of an iOS app still seems remarkable to me.
What I learned building it
This is my first production iOS app after 37 years of infrastructure work. A few things surprised me.
The hard part wasn’t the network code. LAN scanning, SSH, SFTP — this is the stuff I know. The hard part was SwiftUI. Specifically, building an adaptive layout that works well on iPhone and iPad and adapts gracefully when the user rotates, changes window size, or uses split view. Apple’s NavigationSplitView is elegant once you understand it, but it took me a while to understand it.
Privacy-first design is harder than it sounds. I wanted zero cloud, zero account, credentials in the Keychain only. That’s the right decision for an app that handles SSH keys. But it means solving problems that cloud sync would solve for free — like keeping inventory in sync across your iPhone and iPad. SwiftData with CloudKit private database turned out to be the right answer, but getting there took research.
The Shortcuts integration was genuinely fun. I’ve been writing automation scripts my whole career. Hooking into iOS Shortcuts and watching a server alert trigger a cascade of phone-side automation felt like two worlds I care about finally talking to each other.
Who it’s for
Netsolver is built for three kinds of people:
Home lab operators running 3–10 machines. You have a NAS, a Pi or two, maybe a repurposed desktop. You want to know they’re up, and you want to SSH in without hunting for credentials.
Small business owners with a handful of servers or sites to watch. You don’t want to pay enterprise RMM pricing for eight machines. You want a native iOS app that just works.
Freelance developers and web designers who SSH into client servers regularly. You want saved commands, SFTP access, and a way to know immediately if a client site goes dark.
Coming soon
Netsolver is in final development. The core is working: scanning, SSH, SFTP, agent deployment, APNs alerts, and Shortcuts integration. I’m working through the UI polish and App Store submission process now.
If you run a home lab or manage a small fleet of machines, this is being built for you.
I’ll post an update here when it’s available on the App Store. In the meantime, you can find my other apps and development work at robroy.online.
Rob Roy is an indie iOS and macOS developer based in Maine with 37 years of software development experience, including DevOps and systems administration roles at IBM and Disney.