- can this cope with 800-1000 miners?
I don't know exactly. Must.
- does it work with miningrigrentals.com?
In proxy mode, 1 to 1 will work everywhere.
- does it work with miningrigrentals.com?
Yes it works. Set in the config miner (nicehash_nonce = true), in the proxy settings (Emu nicehash = false, Max workers = 1). There will be a 1 to 1 proxy mode.
- does it support SSL for miners (server) and pool (client)?
Yes. Full support (read the description).
- do you charge a fee by default? (I know it's open source)
There is no commission. Perhaps in the next version I will add (but this is not accurate).
Also, I'm on headless machines so no access to web gui. Care to share a full example and/or spec of the config file so I can run it in command line?
Configure pools only through the Web panel. (You can manually in the config)