The easy and secure remote access for SONM Customers and Suppliers with SSH

How do you use Sonm — as a customer, or as a supplier of resources? Both customers and suppliers may be faced with the need to open a secure remote connection.

The customer sometimes needs secure remote access to manage a task that runs on Sonm resources. After all, the resources may be on the other side of the world. It’s also important that suppliers have secure access to their worker PCs. It is not always possible to physically be at the computer.

To give users a way to run commands on remote computers from the comfort of their own homes Sonm provides an opportunity for suppliers to open an SSH session to their Worker PCs and for customers — to their tasks.

Customers: SSH access to your task

Now Sonm customers may access the Docker container with his or her task on the supplier’s PC with SSH, even if both the supplier and the customer are behind a NAT. To make this possible, follow the below steps.

1. Pass KYC (get ‘Identified’ status) to run custom tasks and/or get SSH access to the container (how to do that).
2. Generate RSA keys for SSH (if you don’t have any yet).
3. Edit your Sonm Node configuration file to set the SSH parameters (how to do that).
4. Run the Sonm Node with your user privileges (the SSH agent should have access to your RSA key). The easiest way to do this is to run the Sonm Node in your user session.
5. Set your RSA public key in the task definition (‘task.yaml’ file, ‘container’ section) before running your task.
6. Open the SSH session to the container with the task running.

See our full guide for more details.

Suppliers: SSH access to your worker

Now Sonm suppliers may get SSH access to their remote worker PCs (SSH sessions for user ‘root’ to the host OS), even if the worker PC is behind a NAT and has no public IP. To make this possible, follow the below steps.

1. Install Sonm on the administrative PC that you want to access your worker PC from, such as your laptop (how to do that).
2. Generate RSA keys for SSH (if you don’t have any yet).
3. Edit the Sonm Node configuration file to set the SSH parameters.
4. Run the Sonm Node in your user session.
5. Open the SSH session to your worker PC.

See our full guide for more details.

Remote worker management

You can manage your workers remotely if you have the Sonm Node running with your ‘master’ key. You do not need to open SSH for this. You may:

• check the worker status
• check and manage the benchmarks of the devices
• check the worker ask-plans and deals
• set worker maintenance

To use this feature, you should log in to the Sonm CLI with your master address (‘sonmcli login <your_master_eth_addr>’).

After that, you may perform remote worker management and use all CLI commands.

See the Sonm CLI guide for additional information.

Need help?

If you get stuck, help is always available. We provide you with 24/7 technical support.

If you experience any errors or difficulties with our product, you can get support via:

• Telegram: @Sonmbetatest
• Email: [email protected].

Please be ready to provide all the required information to help us solve your issue.

Check if your Sonm platform components are working correctly using our self-check guide.

Also, please write up a step-by-step description of the actions that led to the error and provide us with the command outputs.

Originally published at sonm.com on November 23, 2018.