Lab Management makes setting up and managing SSH tunnels faster and easier than having to do it manually.
When you add a tunnel in the CollabNet Site Browser view, you specify the host and port numbers in a dialog box. This information gets saved for future sessions. After this, whenever you log into your Lab Management node, the tunnel is automatically reconnected. Moreover, when there are multiple Lab Management nodes that you work on, you can store the tunnel settings for all of them, and keep them ready for future use.
When your Lab Management setup is deployed for "direct-access", you can directly access your Client Node from your corporate network using your laptop or desktop, without going through the Lab Management Manager. You do not need an SSH tunnel to access your host, though it is possible.
When your Lab Management setup is deployed for "isolated-access", each Client Node is on a Network Address Translation (NAT) network behind its Lab Management Manager. Here you need to tunnel through the Lab Management Manager to access your Client Node.