VPS Management Console over SSH

Secure serial port access to your VMs, no VNC or web browser required

Every ARP Networks VPS includes out-of-band management over SSH. Connect directly to your VM's serial port from any terminal — no VNC client, no web browser, no GUI required. Just SSH.

This is sometimes called a VPS serial console, management console over SSH, or out-of-band management over serial. Whatever you call it, the idea is simple: run a getty on the serial device and you have a secure, always-available login to your VM, even when the network stack is down.

Available Devices

The serial console is available on every supported operating system:

/dev/ttyS0 — Linux
/dev/ttyu0 — FreeBSD
/dev/tty00 — OpenBSD

Additional Features

Tunnel VNC over SSH

Need graphical access? You can tunnel VNC traffic over SSH to encrypt the entire session. Select the t option from the console menu (see below) for instructions.

Boot, Shutdown, and Halt

From the same console, you can boot your VM, send a graceful ACPI shutdown signal, or force a hard halt — all without leaving your terminal.

Example Serial Port Session

We create an account for you on our console server and you provide your SSH public key. From there, it's one command:

$ ssh john-doe@console.cust.arpnetworks.com

Welcome to the ARP Networks VM management console

Select from the following functions
  l    list virtual machines
  b    boot
  s    shutdown (graceful) *
  S    shutdown (hard)
  c    connect to serial console
  t    tunnel VNC over SSH (instructions)
  q    quit

* graceful shutdown requires that your VM responds to an ACPI shutdown signal

> _

Press c to connect to the VM's serial port:

FreeBSD/amd64 (devil2.example.com) (ttyd0)

login:

That's all there is to it!