I think you may have miss read that fact this setup is 30 miles away from my house. Without a connection via VPN tunnel from my house to the location of the miners, I would have no access what so ever, other than using Team Viewer through the laptop. Team Viewer on the laptop is backup access, also there are a select few commands that cant be done via tenet or SSH and you need console access.
You put a Team Viewer enabled PC in an otherwise secure setup? Seems like the back door is not as strong as the front door.