Dell NativeEdge: How to generate private and public keys for NativeEdge deployments

Generating an SSH Key-Pair

To generate an SSH key-pair, follow these steps:

• Open a terminal or command prompt on your local machine.
• Run the ssh-keygen command:

ssh-keygen -t rsa -b 4096 -C "your_email@example.com"

• The -t rsa option specifies the RSA key type.
• The -b 4096 option sets the key size to 4096 bits, providing stronger security.
• The -C "your_email@example.com" option adds a comment, usually your email, for identifying the key.

• Specify a file path for saving the key (e.g., /home/user/.ssh/id_rsa). If you press Enter without specifying a path, the key is saved in the default location (~/.ssh/id_rsa).
• Set a passphrase for the key (optional but recommended for added security). Leave it blank if you do not have any additional commentary in the blueprint description.

Step 2: Adding SSH Keys to NativeEdge Secrets

To use the generated SSH key-pair in your NativeEdge blueprints, you must store the keys securely in NativeEdge secrets:
Navigate to Settings -> Security -> Secrets in NativeEdge Orchestrator and click on '+' button. Enter the name of the new secret (for example 'LitmusVM-privatessh') and add the contents of the private key generated in the first step. Ensure that you did not accidentally paste extra new-line symbols in the end of the key. Repeat same actions for the public key, providing the name for the secret accordingly.
Your keys are now securely stored as NativeEdge secrets and can be referenced in your blueprints.

 

Accessing Deployed Virtual Machines.

To access the deployed VM using the same Linux terminal where you generated the SSH key-pair, you can simply use the ssh command along with the appropriate user and IP address of the VM. For example:

ssh -i /path/to/id_rsa username@vm_ip_address

Replace /path/to/id_rsa with the path to your private key, username with the appropriate username (for example, ubuntu for an Ubuntu VM), and vm_ip_address with the IP address of the deployed VM. This allows you to securely connect to the VM directly from your terminal using the SSH key-pair.

Note: If you intend to access the deployed VMs from Windows environment, using PuTTY, you should be aware that PuTTY does not natively support the OpenSSH private key format (.pem). Therefore, you must convert the private key to PuTTY's .ppk format.