EasyServer

EasyServer is a provider-independent control plane for rented compute: one CLI for acquiring provider resources, managing their normalized lifecycle and exposing arbitrary remote TCP services through local loopback Endpoints. It owns the compute resource and connectivity boundary — not the workload running on the machine.

Provider
  │
  ├─ provider-specific Acquisition Flow
  │      Vast.ai marketplace / Intelion.cloud configurator / ...
  ▼
Compute Instance
  │
  ├─ normalized lifecycle: start / stop / restart / destroy
  │
  └─ Provider Access Method → Access Adapter → local EasyServer Endpoint
                                             127.0.0.1:<dynamic-port>

That separation is intentional. Vast.ai searches/rents marketplace offers; Intelion.cloud configures servers from its own catalogs. EasyServer does not pretend those workflows share one universal provisioning request. Once a resource exists, both converge on the same inventory, lifecycle and local-access model.

What EasyServer is for

Use EasyServer when you want provider-independent lifecycle and connectivity around rented compute while keeping provider-specific product concepts in plugins. GPU/AI machines are one use case, but the model is equally applicable to development boxes, game servers, databases, CI workers and arbitrary remote services.

EasyServer 0.1.0 ships first-party Provider Plugins for:

• Vast.ai — marketplace search/rental plus normalized instance lifecycle/access;
• Intelion.cloud — flavor/image/SSH-key catalog discovery, server configuration/creation and normalized lifecycle/access.

Third-party providers can integrate through the public @easyai101/easyserver-plugin-sdk without adding provider branches to core.

Supported release environment

EasyServer 0.1.0 is release-qualified for Windows 11 x64, using Node.js 24.18.1 and npm 11.16.0. SSH-backed access additionally requires the Windows OpenSSH Client (ssh and ssh-keyscan on PATH).

Linux and macOS are not part of the 0.1.0 support contract yet; that means unqualified, not necessarily known-incompatible. See Supported platforms for the exact qualification boundary.

Install

EasyServer 0.1.0 supports two CLI distribution paths on Windows 11 x64.

npm is the primary package/ecosystem path:

npm install --global @easyai101/easyserver

GitHub Releases also provide a versioned portable ZIP, so obtaining the core CLI does not require installing @easyai101/easyserver from npm. The ZIP requires Node.js 24.18.1 on PATH, includes no Provider Plugins and is verified with a published SHA-256 checksum. See Install from GitHub Releases.

Both default installations contain zero Provider Plugins.

If you installed the CLI globally from npm, install only the providers you want into that same global npm environment:

npm install --global @easyai101/easyserver-plugin-vastai
easyserver plugins add @easyai101/easyserver-plugin-vastai

or:

npm install --global @easyai101/easyserver-plugin-intelion
easyserver plugins add @easyai101/easyserver-plugin-intelion

If you use the portable GitHub Release ZIP, install Provider Plugins into the extracted EasyServer prefix instead of npm's ordinary global prefix. The exact --prefix commands are in Install from GitHub Releases.

Check the active plugin set:

easyserver plugins list

Quick start: rent compute and expose a service

The shortest real flow is provider-specific acquisition followed by provider-independent access. This example uses Vast.ai; prepare the account/API key and register an account-level SSH public key first as described in the Vast.ai guide.

Import the API key into the OS-backed Secret Store:

$env:VAST_API_KEY = '<your-api-key>'
easyserver plugins credential set @easyai101/easyserver-plugin-vastai api-key --env VAST_API_KEY
Remove-Item Env:VAST_API_KEY

Search rentable offers and rent one:

easyserver provider vastai marketplace search --gpu "RTX 4090" --min-gpus 1 --verified --limit 10
easyserver provider vastai marketplace rent <offer-id> --image <image> --runtype ssh

Find the resulting EasyServer instance:

easyserver instances list
easyserver instances inspect <instance-id>

Suppose a workload such as ComfyUI is listening on the rented machine at 127.0.0.1:8188. Expose that remote TCP target locally:

easyserver connect <instance-id> --port 8188

EasyServer prints a dynamically allocated loopback address such as:

127.0.0.1:54321

Open http://127.0.0.1:54321 locally while the command remains active. ComfyUI is only an example workload: EasyServer is forwarding generic TCP bytes and does not know or manage ComfyUI itself. 0.1.0 also does not provide HTTP path routing such as /comfyui.

On the first SSH-backed connection, EasyServer shows the discovered host-key fingerprint and requires explicit trust confirmation before enrolling it. Changed trusted keys fail closed.

For daemon-owned persistent forwarding:

easyserver daemon run

Then, from another terminal:

easyserver sessions create <instance-id> --port 8188
easyserver sessions list
easyserver sessions close <session-id>

When a paid resource is no longer needed, close its sessions and use the provider-supported destructive lifecycle operation rather than merely disabling the plugin:

easyserver instances destroy <instance-id>
easyserver instances list

Provider billing semantics remain provider-specific; stopped does not universally mean not billed.

Core commands

easyserver plugins ...                 install-state / credentials / enable-disable
easyserver provider ...                provider-specific acquisition/features
easyserver instances list|inspect ...  normalized inventory
easyserver instances start|stop|restart|destroy ...
easyserver connect ...                 foreground local Endpoint
easyserver daemon run                  local session owner
easyserver sessions create|list|close ...

Run easyserver --help for the exact command surface.

What EasyServer deliberately does not do

EasyServer is not a workload orchestrator. It does not install, deploy, schedule or configure applications on the rented machine; it does not define a universal job/workload specification; and it does not turn provider-specific marketplaces/configurators into one lossy provisioning schema.

It also is not a general reverse proxy or VPN product. The 0.1.0 caller-facing connectivity primitive is an EasyServer-owned local TCP Endpoint backed by an applicable provider Access Method and Access Adapter.

Provider Plugins run in-process and are trusted extensions in 0.1.0; the plugin boundary validates contracts and isolates ordinary failures, but is not a malicious-code sandbox.

Documentation

• Getting started
• Vast.ai quick start
• Intelion.cloud quick start
• Supported platforms
• Security model
• Provider Plugin authoring and operational safety
• Versioning and compatibility

For contributing, see CONTRIBUTING.md. Security issues should follow SECURITY.md rather than a public issue.

License

EasyServer is released under the MIT License.