Create an SSH key pair

To enable encrypted communications with your cluster, you must create anasymmetric key pair (a public and a private key) and associate it with yourcontrol plane or node pool virtual machines.

To generate an asymmetric key pair, run the following command:

ssh-keygen-trsa-mPEM-b4096-C"COMMENT"\-fSSH_PRIVATE_KEY-N""1>/dev/null

Replace the following:

  • SSH_PRIVATE_KEY: a file name to save the key in
  • COMMENT: a text string describing the key

This creates two files:SSH_PRIVATE_KEY containing yourSSH private key, andSSH_PRIVATE_KEY.pub containing thecorresponding public key.

To save your SSH public key into an environment variable, run the followingcommand:

SSH_PUBLIC_KEY=$(catSSH_PRIVATE_KEY.pub)

What's next

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Last updated 2025-11-24 UTC.