Introducing SSH from the Developers Console
Wednesday, August 6, 2014
Accessing a Google Compute Engine VM instance via Secure Shell (SSH) is a common developer task, but when you’re configuring or managing your application, doing so can take you out of the context of what you’re currently working on. Worse yet, a problem might occur when you don’t have your normal computer handy and you have to try to access the VM from a different device without your developer tools installed.
So, we asked ourselves how we could make it quicker for you to access your Compute Engine VMs in any situation. Last month we introduced the ability to SSH into a VM using the
Our answer was simple: make it possible for you to SSH directly to your VM without leaving the Developers Console in your browser. We put forward a few ground rules such as it had to be secure and we shouldn’t require an extension or additional software downloads.
The result? Recently we rolled out the ability for anyone with edit access to your project to open an SSH connection and terminal session from directly within the Developers Console website with no additional installations. To keep your session secure, we ensure private keys are never transmitted over the wire, and that all SSH traffic is encrypted before leaving your browser.
Opening up a session is easy. From inside the Developers Console, all you need to do is open up your project, navigate to the VM instances tab under COMPUTE > COMPUTE ENGINE and then click the SSH button. A new window will appear with the connection progress displayed. This works with all the current versions of most web browsers (Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox and Microsoft Internet Explorer 11) with no additional download required
We also support a common case where only one “frontend” VM on the project has an external IP address,and the rest of the “backend” VMs are not routable from public Internet. To make SSHing into those instances possible from the browser, we support agent forwarding -- you can SSH into the instance with external IP from Cloud Console and then “ssh -A” into the non-external IP instances using their IP address on the private network.
We’ve also tried to pack in a couple of extra goodies in for you. First we keep your connection safe and secure by using only https, generate a private key for each session and never transmit it over the wire, and encrypt all your SSH data before it leaves the browser (that is SSH encryption in addition to https). Clicking under the gear icon, you can change to a light theme if you prefer, navigate easily back to the instance details page in the console in case you closed it, or start a new connection to the same instance in case you need multiple connections.
As more of your developer workflow moves into the web browser, we’re committed to helping bridge the gap between command line and the web browser as seamlessly as possible. We’re interested in hearing more ways we can do so for you. As you can see under the gear icon, we’ve also included a way for you to send us your feedback -- please send us your thoughts.
-Posted by Cody Bratt, Product Manager
So, we asked ourselves how we could make it quicker for you to access your Compute Engine VMs in any situation. Last month we introduced the ability to SSH into a VM using the
gcloud compute command in the Google Cloud SDK which worked out-of-the-box across all major operating systems. However, we wanted to simplify it even further.Our answer was simple: make it possible for you to SSH directly to your VM without leaving the Developers Console in your browser. We put forward a few ground rules such as it had to be secure and we shouldn’t require an extension or additional software downloads.
The result? Recently we rolled out the ability for anyone with edit access to your project to open an SSH connection and terminal session from directly within the Developers Console website with no additional installations. To keep your session secure, we ensure private keys are never transmitted over the wire, and that all SSH traffic is encrypted before leaving your browser.
Opening up a session is easy. From inside the Developers Console, all you need to do is open up your project, navigate to the VM instances tab under COMPUTE > COMPUTE ENGINE and then click the SSH button. A new window will appear with the connection progress displayed. This works with all the current versions of most web browsers (Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox and Microsoft Internet Explorer 11) with no additional download required
We also support a common case where only one “frontend” VM on the project has an external IP address,and the rest of the “backend” VMs are not routable from public Internet. To make SSHing into those instances possible from the browser, we support agent forwarding -- you can SSH into the instance with external IP from Cloud Console and then “ssh -A” into the non-external IP instances using their IP address on the private network.
We’ve also tried to pack in a couple of extra goodies in for you. First we keep your connection safe and secure by using only https, generate a private key for each session and never transmit it over the wire, and encrypt all your SSH data before it leaves the browser (that is SSH encryption in addition to https). Clicking under the gear icon, you can change to a light theme if you prefer, navigate easily back to the instance details page in the console in case you closed it, or start a new connection to the same instance in case you need multiple connections.
As more of your developer workflow moves into the web browser, we’re committed to helping bridge the gap between command line and the web browser as seamlessly as possible. We’re interested in hearing more ways we can do so for you. As you can see under the gear icon, we’ve also included a way for you to send us your feedback -- please send us your thoughts.
-Posted by Cody Bratt, Product Manager
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