How To Connect To Server

Lawrence

Introduction

After you have active server with operating system installed on it, your next step is to make a secure remote connection from your local computer to your server. This article describes how to connect to your server, it is how to connect to your Linux server using SSH, your Windows VPS server using RDP and how to connect to them in extra cases using VNC.




Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) is a proprietary protocol developed by Microsoft, which provides a user with a graphical interface to connect to the server over a network connection. The user employs RDP client software for this purpose.

To start Remote Desktop on the computer you want to work from

- Open Remote Desktop Connection by clicking the Start button .

- In the search box, type Remote Desktop Connection, and then, in the list of results, click Remote Desktop Connection.

- In the Computer box, type IP address of your server that you want to connect to, and then click Connect.

See more on how to connect here.




There is no difference in connecting to Linux based server comparing OpenVZ and KVM based servers. In both cases for daily usage you will use SSH to connect to the server. For this, on Windows computers, we recommend to use program called PuTTY.

1. Downloading and Installation

- PuTTY is a free software application for Microsoft Windows operating systems which can be used to make an SSH connection to your server. You can download the application at

https://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/download.html.

- Save the download to your C:\WINDOWS folder.

- If you want to make a link to PuTTY on your desktop:

-- Open the C:\WINDOWS folder in Windows Explorer.
-- Right click on the putty.exe file and select Send To > Desktop


2. Configurations

- Double-click on the putty.exe program or the desktop shortcut to launch the application.

- Enter your connection settings:

-- Host Name: enter IP of your server

-- Port: 22 (leave as default)

-- Connection Type: SSH (leave as default)

- Click "Open" to start the SSH session.

- If this is your first time connecting to the server from this computer, you will see the following output. Accept the connection by clicking "Yes".

- Once the SSH Connection is open, you should see a terminal prompt asking for your username. Your server's root username is "root".

- Next, enter your password. You can find it in Client Area. Please note that you will NOT see your cursor moving, or any characters typed, when typing your password. This is a standard PuTTY security feature. After you typed it in hit enter.

- Congratulations! You are now logged into your server with SSH.




Note that VNC connection is only for extra cases such as if you misconfigured your server and lost network interface and you are unable to connect to the server via SSH or RDP. For such cases we provide alternative connection using VNC for fixing all issues on the server to restore SSH and RDP connection options. 


Getting Needed data

To connect to the server via VNC you will need:

- IP of the node where your server is;
- Exclusive port which is assigned for your server;
- Password for VNC.

All this can be found in Clients Area on your server management panel.

Connecting to VNC

Now as you have all needed data you can connect to the server via VNC. For this you need VNC client. We recommend to use one of these:

UltraVNC
TightVNC
TigerVNC

After you installed VNC client open it and in the address bar enter:

IP_of_node:your_exclusive_port

For example:

123.12.12.123:5901

And press connect, you will be asked for password, enter password of your VNC which you found in Client Area. That's it, you connected to the server via VNC.