The final goal of this tutorial is to connect to your Scaleway cloud instance via Windows. It is mainly intended for novices and/or users who have never used the SSH key logon system.

Prerequisite:
-have a Scaleway cloud instance
-have installed Putty on your Windows computer

Scaleway uses an SSH key logon and authentication protocol. Therefore, when your instance is delivered you do not receive a root password. The functioning of the connection system is summarized in the following diagram. If wanted, after this process, you will be able to define a root password, and authorize root login.

Therefore, we will have to configure this key system. For this, we will need PuttyGen, a tool that generates an SSH key pair (private and public). PuttyGen is automatically installed on your machine if you already have Putty.

Step 1: SSH key generation with PuttyGen

Start PuttyGen. Once launched, without changing any parameters, click on "Generate" and move your mouse over the empty area until the green bar fills up.

Once the generation is complete, you should get a screen, as shown in the second screenshot.

Select all the characters in the "Public key for pasting into OpenSSH authorized_keys file" box, and copy them.

Once this is done, click on "Save private key". Fill in a password (optional), then select an easy to remember location to save, we will need this file in step 3.

Step 2: Adding the public key on your Scaleway cloud instance

Log into your Scaleway account, click on the astronaut icon in the top right corner, then click on "credentials".

Once on this page, simply click on "Add a new SSH key".

Once you have clicked on it, a modal appears. Then, it asks you to fill in two boxes. The first one is used to insert the previously generated public SSH key. Then paste this last one. For the second box, choose a name for your key (e.g. SSH Key PC Laptop Tom). Validate and apply the change by clicking on "Add SSH Key".

Congratulations, your public key is now installed on all your instances. However, the tutorial is not over yet. There is still the client part to configure.

Step 3: Adding the private key in the SSH Putty client

We've just added our SSH public key to our Scaleway instances system. Now we're going to have to give our private key to Putty.

First, enter the IP address of your Scaleway instance, or the domain name associated with your Scaleway instance.

Then go to the sidebar. In the sidebar, click on the small "+" next to "SSH" and then click on "Auth".

Once on this page, select "Browse".

A new window appears and asks you to select the private key saved in step 1. Fill in its location.

Once selected, click open. Congratulations, the private SSH key has been added to our SSH client.

Step 4: Restart of the Scaleway instance, and final connection

In order to apply these changes, you must restart your Scaleway cloud instance.

Once that's done, go back to Putty, and just click on "Open".

During the first connection, a warning message may appear, do not pay attention to it. Click on "yes".

Enter the user "root", and click enter.

Congratulations, you are now connected to your Scaleway™ instance, using SSH keys.

Note: Each client (computer) has its own SSH key combination. If you want to connect to your Scaleway™ instance via another machine, repeat the process.

The different IP addresses are given for information only. They are no longer used. As a reminder, any attack by denial of service is punishable by a 150 000€ fine and 10 years imprisonment.