vCloud Automation Center – vCAC 5.1 – Enable Connect Using SSH

Caution: Articles written for technical not grammatical accuracy, If poor grammar offends you proceed with caution ;-)

You may have noticed on the security tab of a blueprint there is an option you can enable to “Connect using RDP or SSH”. You may have also noticed when you provision a Windows Server you see a “Connect using RDP” menu option, but when you provision a Linux Server you don’t see a “Connect using SSH” option. This article is going to tell you how to enable the “Connect using SSH” option for Linux Servers.

There are a few things you need to know before we enable this. Windows does not have a default SSH handler, so simply enabling this option won’t do you a whole lot of good unless you configure Windows for a default SSH handler. Doing this will require a registry edit. There are tools that enable this as part of their installation, but I’m going to show you how to do it using putty.

Enabling Connect Using SSH in vCAC

Standard Portal
To enable in the standard portal complete the following steps:

1. Edit the file “web.config” located under {vCAC Install Folder}\DCAC Server\Website. Standard installation location is (C:\Program Files (x86)\DynamicOps\DCAC Server\Website)
2. In the “web.config” file locate the section labeled “appSettings” and add the following line of code between the tags:



3. Add the property “Machine.SSH” with a Value of “True” to the Linux blueprints you would like to enable SSH for.
4. Do an IISreset to restart IIS
5. After you provision a new Linux Server you will see the “Connect Using SSH” option available.
6. If you want to enable for existing Linux Server select the server, choose “edit“, go to the “properties” tab and add the “Machine.SSH” property with a value of “True” and the machine will now have the “Connect using SSH” option.

 
Self-Service Portal

1. Edit the file “web.config” located under {vCAC Install Folder}\Self-Service Portal. Standard installation location is (C:\Program Files (x86)\DynamicOps\Self-Service Portal)
2. In the “web.config” file locate the section labeled “appSettings” and change “ShowConnectUsingSSH” vale from “False” to “True“.
3. Add the property “Machine.SSH” with a Value of “True” to the Linux blueprints you would like to enable SSH for.
4. Do an IISreset to restart IIS
5. After you provision a new Linux Server you will see the “Connect Using SSH” option available.
6. If you want to enable for existing Linux Server select the server, choose “edit“, go to the “properties” tab and add the “Machine.SSH” property with a value of “True” and the machine will now have the “Connect using SSH” option.

Configure Putty as the default SSH handler

1. Install putty using the putty-0.61-installer.exe installer included in the putty_ssh.zip located here.
2. Copy the putty.exe included in the attached putty_ssh script to the putty install folder created as part of step 1.
3. Edit the putty.reg file and ensure the path to putty.exe is consistent with your installation path and change it in all locations if needed.
4. Execute the putty.reg file to make the needed registry changes for the default SSH handler.
5. Done! Now when you click “Connect using SSH” it will auto-magically launch putty and connect to your server.