Fleet management through an always-on agent
MeshCentral is a remote fleet management server written in Node.js and run from a browser. The admin installs the agent the server generates on each machine, and within a minute the machine shows up in the console, ready for remote desktop, a terminal or file access, with nothing to install on the admin's own computer. The agent opens the connection to the server and keeps it alive, so a machine behind a NAT router stays reachable. On Intel PCs with Intel AMT, a second, hardware-level connection keeps working when the operating system is down, which the documentation calls out-of-band management.
RustDesk runs its own application on the machine you control, and Apache Guacamole connects to the RDP, VNC or SSH server that machine exposes. MeshCentral installs a permanent agent instead. The comparison of self-hosted remote desktop tools weighs that agent against the installed client and the browser gateway.
Out-of-band control of BIOS and power through Intel AMT
- The agent and Intel AMT complement each other: the agent handles fast remote desktop, the clipboard and files, while AMT handles the BIOS, power actions and machines that are asleep. An "Intel AMT only" device group manages PCs with no software installed at all.
- Agentless machines through a relay: one agent on a remote network relays SSH, SFTP, RDP or VNC sessions to the machines next to it, even when the server runs in WAN mode.
- Agents for Windows, Linux, macOS and FreeBSD on x86, ARM and MIPS, plus an Android agent.
- No external database to get started: the embedded NeDB sets itself up on first launch. MongoDB, PostgreSQL, MariaDB or MySQL take over later, and the Docker image comes in MongoDB, PostgreSQL and MySQL variants.
- Directory and SSO: LDAP, SAML, OpenID Connect and Azure AD, with a second factor through TOTP or Duo.
- MeshCentral Router: a Windows application that forwards a local TCP or UDP port to a machine in the fleet through the server, to carry an RDP session or any other protocol.
Written for sysadmins, LAN-only out of the box
The project is written for administrators. The user guide expects readers to know the basics of networking, operating systems and network security. The Intel AMT guide recommends AMT-equipped PCs for machines that are hard to reach physically, and points the agentless group at people who don't want a background agent or already run another management tool.
To get started, the server needs Node.js 20 or later and nothing else. It installs with npm install meshcentral (without sudo) or from the ghcr.io/ylianst/meshcentral image, and the docs rule out the built-in updater inside a container: you update by pulling a new image. According to the docs, a Raspberry Pi or an AWS t3.nano instance can manage a few hundred devices; they give no memory figure. NeDB "works well for small deployments", and MongoDB is recommended for large fleets and before peering several servers. The first account created becomes the server administrator.
Out of the box, the server stays on the local network. Started without arguments, it runs in LAN mode and agents find it by multicast. Managing machines over the Internet takes a static IP or a DNS name, plus open ports: 443 for agents and the console, 4433 for Intel AMT, by default.
Intel AMT only helps once it is activated. Only some Intel PCs have it. ACM activation needs a certificate from an authority Intel AMT trusts, with the full chain, and a machine that accepts its domain (DHCP option 15, a name entered in MEBx, or a USB key). The activation log stores the AMT administrator passwords, so it has to be protected and backed up.
Whoever runs the agent installer adds a machine. The Windows agent holds no sensitive data and can be reused across computers. The FAQ describes unknown machines appearing in a console: an antivirus had submitted the installer to its vendor, who ran it on test machines. The agentAllowedIP setting limits agents to given address ranges, and 1.2.6 restricts new enrollments by source address.
About one release a month, two maintainers. Version 1.2.6, released on September 24, 2026, is the sixteenth in twelve months; 1.2.0 (May 28, 2026) made Node.js 20 mandatory. Simon Smith authored 260 of the 490 commits over the past twelve months. He and Ylian Saint-Hilaire, who owns the repository, handle security reports. The server and the agent (the latter written in C, in a separate repository) are both Apache-2.0, and the official site mentions no paid offering.