Nutanix Calm provides a set of pre-seeded application blueprints that are available to you for consumption.
The VM base images are provided by nutanix and these are cloud-init enabled images.
Nutanix is following therefore a security best practice manner:
– Using a cloud-init enabled image
– Use cloud-init to inject a public key upon VM boot (use can do this for AHV VMs with the guest-customization area in Calm) as a runtime variable
– Give Calm your private key as a runtime credential during launch
So how we need a ssh private/public key pair:
- start puttygen and click on “Generate a public/private key pair” – move around with the mouse to get a random pattern
- in the upper field you find the public key which you will have the public key beginning with “ssh-rsa”
- you have to export the private key in the OpenSSH format (use “force new file format”):
- save the file at a secure location and copy the contents into the private key field before launching the CALM blueprint
Important: you have to include the the opening and closing stanza when copying the private key. Also when you copy the public key into the INSTANCE_PUBLIC_KEY field it has to begin with “ssh-rsa”.