Enable or Deactivate SSH on the Horizon Cloud Connector Appliance Using the Configuration Portal

After the Horizon Cloud Connector appliance is successfully paired with a Horizon pod, you can use the browser-based Horizon Cloud Connector configuration portal to activate or deactivate the SSH setting on the appliance. Starting with version 1.5 of the appliance, SSH is turned off in the appliance's operating system by default.

These steps apply to Horizon Cloud Connector version 1.5 or later.

Note: (Horizon Cloud Connector 2.0 and later) You can use these steps to enable SSH access to the primary node only. To enable SSH access to the worker node, you must instead follow the steps described in Enable SSH Access to the Horizon Cloud Connector Using a Command Line Interface.

Prerequisites

Verify that the following items are in place.

• The appliance is successfully paired with the Horizon pod. The configuration portal screen with the toggle is accessible only when the Horizon Cloud Connector appliance is successfully paired with the Horizon pod. Prior to pairing the connector with the pod, you can use your vSphere environment to launch the appliance console and log in to use the command line to activate or deactivate SSH on the appliance. See the topic Enable SSH Access to the Horizon Cloud Connector Using a Command Line Interface.

• You have the Customer Connect credentials that have administrator access to your Horizon Cloud tenant environment. Those credentials are needed to log in to the Horizon Cloud Connector configuration portal.

• If your Active Directory domain is registered with your Horizon Cloud tenant environment, you need the credentials of an Active Directory account that is in a group with the Horizon Cloud Super Administrator role. When an Active Directory domain is registered with your Horizon Cloud tenant, a second login screen appears after you enter the Customer Connect credentials and you must subsequently enter Active Directory account credentials to access the configuration portal. For details about how your Active Directory domain gets registered with your Horizon Cloud tenant and the Super Administrators role, see First-Gen Tenants - Perform the First Required Active Directory Domain Registration for Your Horizon Cloud Control Plane Tenant and Assign Roles to Active Directory Groups that Control Which Areas of the Horizon Universal Console are Activated for Individuals in Those Groups After They Authenticate to Your Horizon Cloud Tenant Environment.

• You have the URL address that displays the configuration portal in your browser. To display the configuration portal's login screen, point your browser to one of the following:

  • The Horizon Cloud Connector appliance's IP address, https://IP-address/
  • If you created a forward and reverse lookup record in your DNS server that maps a fully-qualifed domain name (FQDN) to the IP address, that FQDN

• (Horizon Cloud Connector 1.9 and later) You have prepared the SSH public key required for authentication of the ccadmin user, in one of the following ways:

  • You have already registered the SSH public key during the deployment of the Horizon Cloud Connector OVA file, as described in Horizon Pods on Premises or in VMC on AWS: Download and Deploy the Horizon Cloud Connector into the Pod's vSphere Environment in the Deployment Guide.
  • You have generated an SSH public key but have not registered it yet. You will have the option to register the key in the Horizon Cloud Connector configuration portal to complete the setup of SSH public key authentication. Important: Beginning with Horizon Cloud Connector 1.9, SSH access is no longer supported for the root user account. For improved security, SSH access is only supported for the ccadmin user account through public-key (strongly recommended) or password authentication.

  You can still use the root account to perform non-SSH administrative tasks on the appliance.

Procedure

1. In your browser, load the Horizon Cloud Connector configuration portal's URL and log in with Customer Connect credentials valid for your tenant environment, as described in the prerequisites.

   When your Active Directory domain is registered with that tenant environment, the system displays a second login screen. Enter the credentials for an Active Directory account that has the Super Administrators role, as described in the prerequisites.

   The configuration portal opens to the screen that displays the action buttons for administrative tasks on the connector.

2. Do one of the following.

   • (Horizon Cloud Connector 1.5 through 1.8) Use the Enable SSH toggle to activate or deactivate SSH on the appliance.

     The setting of the toggle that you see displayed in the portal is the current status of SSH in the appliance.

   • (Horizon Cloud Connector 1.9 and later) To access the SSH configuration controls, click Configure SSH in the appliance configuration portal.

     

     In the SSH configuration dialog box that appears, use the controls to activate or deactivate SSH on the appliance and to register the SSH public key that you generated earlier. You must register a public key if you are activating SSH for the first time or want to change an already registered key.

     The setting of the toggle that you see displayed in the dialog box is the current status of SSH in the appliance.