Machines – Timmy Reilly's Blog

SSH KEYS allow us to connect to VMs without using passwords but by passing a private key that can be managed by you or your organization.

For more about SSH

There are three parts to this tutorial:
A. Generate an SSH Key
B. Create a VM in Azure that uses the public key
C. Connect to VM using SSH keys

Prerequisites:
Bash
ssh-keygen ($ info ssh-keygen to learn more)
An Azure Subscription

A. Generate an SSH Key

Open bash and enter:
$ ssh-keygen -t rsa -b 2048 -C "Ubuntu@azure-server"
Keyname: server-key
Passphrase: somethingMemorable

Copy the contents of server-key.pub
$ cat server-key.pub

Should look like this:
ssh-rsa AAAAB3NzaC1yc2EAAAADAQABAAABAQDMlUr7PCEdBmCVZHG5RqI8i7GgYAzd2G/FZ987XXa63vnqxZmZogVmmXrTnBHeM6oDv7v7g495CiiiINhJbGR4o7t4agiHOM43egDv7BbiViTlfVr3y5AxLUvRwHnC3egl8ABVX1anfXXR73x7IS3YRNWkh6gXtlhImw8UKG04UoZEmWB9BLt53lk/9c3Hxz22YZarzImrpQYy1XEUZ096B9mK/Fe+/McH78ZHUpXEgOZBIDP5KdqPk5XKznpwUDJ4/SPXPEWWCCjQ8gOoTFcFMaiMnXp5o5Udsi/DFO1TS/t8BeCRymkr5tdPvzexjkjkjkjkjkjkjkjkjkjkjkjt Ubuntu@azure-server

Here’s what it looks like for me:
keygenandcat

Cool and you’ll also notice that there’s another file in that same directory – server-key
$ ls | grep server
Here’s what that looks like for me:
lskeys

Now that we have our public and private keys let’s get our VM setup.

B. Create a VM in Azure that uses the public key

1. Go to the Azure Portal

2. Select New -> Search: Ubuntu Server
(I’m using 14.04 this time)
selectubuntu1404

3. Make sure you’ve selected Resource Manger and click Create:
resourcemanagecreate

4. Now configure the basics per our ssh-keygen parameters
Name: azure-server
VM Disk Type: Up To You
User name: Ubuntu
Authentication type: SSH public key
SSH public key: Paste the results of $ cat server-key.pub
Subscription: Depends how you want to pay for the server
Resource Group: Up to you – I’m going to create a new one so I can quickly delete it.
Location: Up to you

Should look like this:
basicsconfigurationforssh

Then select OK to go to the next section.

5. Choose Virtual Machine Size
I’m going with the smallest VM for testing.
You can also view all different VM sizes to find the right one for your use case.
pickvmsize

6. Configure optional Features
Setting the Storage account name to something you’ll remember easily is good.
And if you want to configure ports now you can select Network Security group to allow ports specific traffic.
Here’s what that looks like:
optional-azure-settings
Click okay to continue to the Summary of your VM.

Here’s our summary:
summary-click-okay-to-create-vm

Select okay to start your VM.

7. Wait for it to be ready.
Dashboard will have an icon and you’ll get a notification when its ready:
waiting-for-vm-to-spin-up-from-dashboard

8. Once ready select on it to see the overview and the IP address.
Should look like this:
vm-overview-ip

Great! We have a VM and its IP address. Lets use our Private SSH key to connect.

C. Connect to VM using SSH Keys

1. Open bash to file location you created the keys in.
Make sure they’re there:
$ ls | grep server

2. Enter this command to use SSH to connect:
$ ssh -i server-key Ubuntu@52.183.31.11 -v
or more generally
$ ssh -i keyname username@ip.address -v
Make sure you’re using server-key and not server-key.pub
Tip: -v is the verbose option. Not necessary, but it helps to see if the key is being accepted

3. Great, now accept the certificate, and enter your memeroablePassphrase
Whole thing should look like this:
ssh-using-key-to-inbash

And you’ll be in the terminal of your VM:
in-the-terminal-of-the-vm

Yay!
You’ve got the key, you’ve got the VM, now put it to work!
Flask on Ubuntu
Node on Ubuntu
Mongo on Ubuntu
Connecting to VMs from Azure Web Apps

Let me know if you have any questions by posting in the comments below!

When I search:
Node JS Server Azure, Ubuntu, JavaScript, Mongo, Postgres, Flask, VM
I turn up with all sorts of unhelpful results.
So I dedicated a couple days to creating a couple guides for common Cloud Stacks on Azure VMs to make it as simple as possible to start deploying your code to the cloud.

This is the introduction and at the bottom of this blog post you’ll see other workflows fill in.

So, Here’s a guide to deploying an Ubuntu VM on Azure:
1. Gather Materials
2. Create VM
3. Check VM using SSH

1. Gather Materials
Here’s what you’ll need:
An Azure Account
An SSH Client perhaps putty… or even Bash On Windows?

2. Create VM

Head into the Azure Portal: portal.azure.com

And Select Virtual Machines -> Then ‘Add’
selectVirtualmachines

You’ll then see a page like this:
selectubuntu

Select Ubuntu Server 14.04.

There are lots of configurable deployments available if you feel like exploring.

Then select Create, but make sure the deployment model is Resource Manager as its more future ready then the classic model:
createvm

We’ll then get to the basic configuration tab, fill out the info and pick a User name and Password that you’ll remember because you’ll need it later!

configurationbasics

If you’re not familiar with Resource Groups check out THIS ARTICLE

I’ve named my resource group: ResourceGroupOne

Hit Okay to go to the next configuration pane

Select the Size of your VM. To see all the options select ‘View All’
selectvmsize

We’re going to go with the cheapest option A1 Standard:
SelectAOne

Hit Okay to take us to our final configuration Pane, “Settings”.

settingstwo

There are a number of different settings presented here.

First up is Storage:
This will configure what we want to name the storage account for our vm. I’ve changed mine to ‘resourcegrouponestorage’, but I could have selected any of my previous storage account in the same region, in this case westus.

Second is Network:
We can configure a Virtual Network to allow our virtual machines to connect to other resource on our network by default. We can also change this later. So in this case I’m creating the default virtual network.

Again, I could have selected a previously created Virtual Network Called ‘Databases’ which is in the same region.
virtualnetworkdefault

Third is Extensions:
We won’t add any extensions

Fourth is Monitoring:
Which we’ll disable for simplicity sake, but is a very powerful tool one you start needing to make scaling decisions.

Fifth and finally is Availability:
We won’t use an availability set, until we need to scale out our app.

Here’s what the lower portion of our settings pane looks like:
settingstwoend

And we’ll select OK to finish with our settings. This will take us to the summary page so we can do a one more check on our machine, don’t get to anxious about making mistakes because we can always tear this one down and spin up another if we messed something up!
vmsummary

Hit Okay one last time!

You’ll then be taken to your dashboard where you’ll see a nice loading tile:
loadingdashboard

It’ll take ~5 minutes to spin up and then we’ll be ready to take on the world!

Once ready it’ll look like this:
clickthetile

Click the tile to hit the landing page for our VM:
vmnumberonelandingpage

See that public IP address?
We’ll use that to SSH into our machine.

In my case: 13.88.180.170 !

3. Check VM using SSH

Let’s SSH into our box.

Pull out your preferred SSH client. Here’s bash on Windows and Putty Side by Side:
sshintomachine

Notice ‘Timothy’ Triple underlined?
That’s the User Name we set during basic configuration and is paired with the password that we also set in Azure.

When you connect you might have to accept the ras2key fingerprint. It’ll look like this when using putty. Or it’ll be in the terminal using bash. Type ‘yes’ or Select Yes to continue.
sayyestowarning

Then type in your password and marvel and your creation:
typeinyourpassword

Let’s test our vm by installing updates! Yay Updates!

$ sudo apt-get update
sudoaptgetupdate

Now that you have a VM ready let’s put it to work!

Host a Node Server
Host a Python Flask Server

Tag: Machines

Intro to Ubuntu Virtual Machines on Azure