Overview
DreamCompute uses SSH keys instead of passwords to access your instances. This increases security and simplifies user management for OpenStack, because the public key is injected into the instance during creation, so you do not need to modify files or passwords on the operating system at startup.
There are several ways to create a Key pair. Choose one of the options below.
- Create a new Key pair in the DreamCompute dashboard
- Create a new Key pair in Windows
- Create a new Key pair in Mac or Linux
- Creating and importing a Key pair using the OpenStack CLI
Each instance can only be assigned a single Key Pair. When you originally launch an instance you can select the Key Pair you would like to use with the new instance.
It's not possible within the DreamCompute panel to change the Key Pair assigned to an instance after the instance has been created without overwriting/erasing data. Make sure to assign the correct Key Pair when originally creating the instance.
SSH key Components
There are two parts to an SSH key:
- a private key
- a public key
The private key is known only to you and should be safeguarded. On UNIX-based systems such as Mac and Linux, the private key is generally stored in:
/home/username/.ssh/id_rsa
The public key can be shared with any server you would like to allow SSH access to. On UNIX-based system, the public key is generally stored in:
/home/username/.ssh/id_rsa.pub
SSH keys generated on Windows systems using the PuTTY key generator (puttygen.exe) are not stored in a uniform location, but instead wherever the user chooses to save them.