Take your desktop offline, bring it back when you're ready
Sometimes you need to work without a network connection. Flights, remote sites, unreliable hotel WiFi — the network isn’t always there, but the work still needs to happen. Check In/Check Out lets users take their desktop VM with them and bring it back when they’re done.
A user requests checkout from Dragon’s Eye. Tophan snapshots the desktop VM, encrypts it, and transfers it to the user’s laptop. The server-side copy is locked — no one else can modify it while it’s checked out. The user runs the desktop locally as a standard VM, working completely offline.
When the user returns to the network, they check the desktop back in. Tophan computes a delta between the checkout snapshot and the current state, transferring only the changed blocks. A 50GB desktop where the user modified 2GB of files transfers 2GB, not 50GB. The server-side copy is updated and unlocked.
Encryption is non-negotiable. The checked-out image is encrypted with a key derived from the user’s identity. If the laptop is lost or stolen, the desktop image is unreadable without authentication.
Remote wipe lets administrators invalidate a checked-out desktop remotely. The next time the laptop connects to any network, the image is destroyed. This works even if the user never checks back in.
Time-limited checkout sets an expiration. After the deadline, the local image self-destructs and the server-side copy unlocks automatically. Configurable per user, per group, or per desktop pool — default 7 days, maximum 30.
Conflict resolution handles the rare case where an administrator needed to unlock and modify the server copy during checkout. On check-in, the user sees a diff of what changed on both sides and chooses how to merge.