Enabling Advanced Remote Support on Platform9 VMware Appliance

By default, members of the Platform9 support team cannot interactively log onto a customer’s deployed Platform9 VMware appliance. In exceptional circumstances, it is sometimes useful to enable the advanced remote support capability in order to troubleshoot challenging problems. It allows a support engineer to securely log onto your appliance as the pf9 user in order to analyze and fix issues. For security reasons, only the customer can enable it.

Note: despite being based on SSH, enabling this capability does not expose your appliance to SSH login from any network, only Platform9’s. It leverages the appliance’s existing secure connection to the Platform9 cloud controller, and does not require any firewall changes to your operating system or network.

Step 1: Enable ‘Advance Remote Support’ From Platform9 UI

• Log on to the Platform9 UI.
• Under ‘Infrastructure’ menu, browse to ‘Hosts’ tab. Then click on ‘Manage VMware Gateway’ button. Under ‘Actions’ column for the currently enabled gateway, click on ‘Enable Remote Support’.

Step 2: Notify Platform9 Support Team

Communicate with your Platform9 support representative that Advance Remote Access has been enabled.

Disable Advanced Remote Support

To disable Advance Remote Support, click on ‘Disable Advance Remote Support’ under ‘Actions’ column for the gateway.