Enabling SSH on Elastic Metal servers running virtualization distributions

Elastic Metal servers support the installation of virtualization solutions Proxmox and ESXi. These solutions can be managed from either a web interface or a management tool, and therefore direct SSH access to machines running one of these solutions is disabled by default. However, you can enable SSH for advanced management tasks if required.

Before you start

To complete the actions presented below, you must have:

• A Scaleway account logged into the console
• An Elastic Metal server with Proxmox VE

Enabling SSH on Proxmox VE

Proxmox VE is a complete, open-source server management platform for virtualization. It combines the KVM hypervisor and Linux Containers (LXC), storage and networking features - manageable through a web-based user interface. However, SSH connections to the Proxmox VE host are disabled by default for security reasons.

If you require SSH access to your Elastic Metal server, you can enable SSH on your machine after the installation of Proxmox from the Scaleway console.

1. Log in to the Proxmox web interface of your Elastic Metal server.
   Tip

   You can find the URL of the Proxmox VE interface on the overview page of your Elastic Metal server in the Scaleway console.

2. Select your server in the Datacenter view of Proxmox.
3. Click Shell in the server view to open a shell in the web interface.
4. Open the file /etc/ssh/sshd_config in a text editor.
5. Go to the line #PermitRootLogin and uncomment it by removing the #. Change the option to yes:

   [...]
   PermitRootLogin yes
   [...]
   

   
6. Save the file and quit the text editor.
7. Restart the SSH service to enable SSH login.

   systemctl restart ssh
   

   You can now use SSH on your Elastic Metal server. Use the login root and your Proxmox password when connecting to the machine.

Enabling SSH on ESXi

VMware ESXi is a bare metal hypervisor that allows you to install multiple virtual machines on your Elastic Metal server. It can be configured from an easy-to-use web interface.

1. Log in to the ESXi web interface of your Elastic Metal server.

   Tip

   You can find the URL of the ESXi interface on the overview page of your Elastic Metal server in the Scaleway console.

2. From the Host dashboard, click Actions > Services > Enable Secure Shell (SSH). SSH is enabled.

   

3. Log into your server using SSH.

   ssh root@my-exsi-host
   

   The ESXi shell displays. You can now perform administrative tasks on the machine.

   The time and date of this login have been sent to the system logs.
   WARNING:
     All commands run on the ESXi shell are logged and may be included in
     support bundles. Do not provide passwords directly on the command line.
     Most tools can prompt for secrets or accept them from standard input.
   VMware offers supported, powerful system administration tools.
   See www.vmware.com/go/sysadmintools for details.
   The ESXi Shell can be disabled by an administrative user. See the
   vSphere Security documentation for more information.
   [root@my-esxi-host:~]
   

4. Disable SSH from the host dashboard. Click Actions > Services > Disable Secure Shell (SSH). SSH is disabled.