SSH keys management in Xen Orchestra

Olivier Lambert

• 2 min read

Remember our article on playing with CloudInit and XenServer thanks to Xen Orchestra? We managed to improve our UI to get it even easier. Let's take a tour.

Manage your SSH keys

In your user zone, you can manage your keys (create, remove). Click on "New SSH key":

Then fill the key zone. We'll automatically fetch the key name (user@host at the end):

You're done:

Create a VM to use your key(s)

Now we got our "brucewayne@mypc" key, let's create a VM. Use a template with existing disks and CloudInit ready. For those who want a recap, don't forget to read our previous blog posts on this topic:

In the "Install settings" category, activate "Config drive" option:

We automatically add the first existing key. If you create a VM right now with this setting, user "brucewayne" with his key can access the VM without a password.

But we did more.

Create keys on the fly

Maybe you want to add a key without going back to your user zone (because you set a lot of things in the current VM creation view). No problem, just fill the "SSH key" field and click on "+" icon. It will add the key in the select and save it for later use:

And it's added:

If you create the VM now, both users with their keys can access the VM without a password.

And if you go back to your user zone, you can see all these news keys:

This feature will help you to create VMs in few clicks and seconds, without anything to manually enter after your keys are saved.