Create a Key Pair

Eucalyptus uses cryptographic key pairs to verify access to instances. Before you can run an instance, you must create a key pair. Creating a key pair generates two keys: a public key (saved within Eucalyptus) and a corresponding private key (output to the user as a character string). To enable this private key you must save it to a file and set appropriate access permissions (using the chmod command), as shown in the example below.

When you create a VM instance, the public key is then injected into the VM. Later, when attempting to login to the VM instance using SSH, the public key is checked against your private key to verify access. Note that the private key becomes obsolete when the public key is deleted.

Create Key Pairs with the Console

  1. From the main dashboard screen, click the Key Pairs link in the Network and Security section, or select the Network and Security submenu from the Manage Resources navigation menu. The Manage Keypairs screen will appear.
  2. On the Manage Key Pairs screen, click the Create new key pair link. The Create New Key Pair dialog will appear.
  3. Type a name for the new key pair into the Name text box.
  4. Click the Create and Download button. The private half of the key pair is saved to the default download location for your browser.
    Note: Keep your private key file in a safe place. If you lose it, you will be unable to access instances created with the key pair.
  5. Change file permissions to enable access to the private key file in the local directory. For example, on a Linux or Mac OS X system:
    chmod 0600 <keypair_name>.private