Deployment Best Practices

I have a couple of questions about Power BI implementations that I am hoping you guys can assist with.

I cannot connect to their database from an outside computer becuase they do not open their db server to the public. Because of this, we are remoting into their windows server, and doing development there. The auto refresh client is also running on the server.

I'm sure this is not best practice. What is the best practice? Do companies normally have a vpn set up for computers outside of their network to connect to their database?

The auto refresh client is set up on the client's server. Every time the server is rebooted, the client needs to be opened, and started again. Is there a best practice to make sure the client auto starts on a reboot?