Generating an SSH key for virtual application patterns

You can generate an SSH key for virtual application patterns.

About this task

If you do not have an existing RSA key pair, you can generate one from the user interface or you can use a third-party application to generate a key pair.

Use these instructions to use the system to generate an SSH key. See the Related information section for instructions on using PuTTY to generate the SSH key.

Procedure

  1. Click Patterns > Virtual Application Patterns.
  2. Select a virtual application pattern and click the Deploy icon.
  3. In the Deploy Virtual Application dialog box, expand the Advanced section to add the SSH protocol key.
  4. Click Generate. The SSH public key is automatically populated in the SSH Key field.
    You can use an existing public key or generate a new key.
  5. Copy and save the generated public key from the SSH Key field.
  6. Click Download > Save to save the private key file.
    The default name is id_rsa. On Windows, the file might be saved as id_rsa.txt.
    Important: The system does not keep a copy of the private key. If you do not download the private key, you cannot gain access to the virtual machine, unless you configure a new public key through the deployment management user interface. Save your public key and id_rsa private key file in a secure location.
  7. If you want to continue with the deployment and upload the generated public key, specify the remaining required information and click OK. Otherwise, cancel the deployment. For more information about virtual application deployment, see the Related tasks section.

Results

The SSH key pair is generated and can now be used to set up access to virtual machines in multiple deployments. When you use the same key pair for multiple deployments, users who maintain or troubleshoot virtual machines in your environment do not need to reconfigure their SSH client with a different private key each time they access a particular virtual application instance.

The generated id_rsa private key file is in OpenSSH format and can be used with OpenSSH and is compatible with SSH clients. To use the key with other clients, the key might need to be converted to a different format. If this conversion cannot be done, it is recommended that you generate a key pair separately.

You can optionally use the command-line interface to regenerate or verify the complexity of an SSH key. To use the command-line interface to regenerate an SSH key, start the command-line interface and enter the sshkey reset command.

To use the command-line interface to verify the complexity of the SSH key, start the command-line interface and enter the sshkey verify command.

Note: You can also generate an SSH key when you configure shared services. For more information, see the Related concepts section.