Connecting and administering a RES HyperDrive appliance can be frustrating the first time you try. Therefore, I thought I’d put a few notes together on how to connect and transfer files to the appliance. If you’re planning on deploying SSL wildcard certificates, you’re going to need to know how to do this. Whilst you can always use the XenServer or vSphere console, connecting via SSH has many benefits.
The first thing to realise is that the HyperDrive appliance listens on port TCP port 80 for Windows client synchronisation and TCP port 8080 for OS X/Mac client sync. The OS X client tunnels over SSH and therefore the default SSH (TCP port 22) is not used.
Secondly you will also need the SSH RSA key to connect. After successfully completing the configuration wizard, you are offered the option to download the PuTTY or OpenSSH keys. Don’t worry if you never saved these somewhere safe as you can always download them later from the https://<ApplianceFQDN>/va/keys/putty or https://<ApplianceFQDN>/va/keys/rsa URLs (this doesn’t appear to work on the RC release). Notice that you will need to authenticate with the root password to download the keys (notice the typo?!):
Once you have the private key you can configure the PuTTY client. Fire up the PuTTY client and enter the RES HyperDrive appliance IP address or FQDN. You must make sure that the port is set to TCP port 8080.
Before continuing you need to import the SSH private key. Expand the Connection > SSH > Auth node and select the saved key file you downloaded earlier:
When you click the Open button you should be connected to the RES HyperDrive appliance and asked if whether you trust the server’s key:
Click Yes to trust the key and continue. You’ll be prompted for a username. As you’re authenticating with a key you won’t need to enter a password. You may not be aware, but you’re actually authenticating with the local “hyperdrive” user account key. Therefore, you must use a username of hyperdrive to connect. If you enter any other user account, e.g. root, you’ll be denied access.
Once you have access to the appliance you can switch users (SU/SUDO) to perform the required administrative tasks. Enjoy!
