SSH Gateway::Business Case

2012 March 07: Email to Shaz Requesting a VM

Date: Wed, 7 Mar 2012 13:19:21 +0000
From: Simon Hood <simonh@sekhmet.umist.ac.uk>
To: Shaz Ashraf <shaz.ashraf@manchester.ac.uk>
Cc: pen@man.ac.uk, simon.hood@manchester.ac.uk
Subject: officialy supported ssh gateway for research computing


Hi Shaz,

currently off-campus access to the CSF (and soon Redqueen) will be only via
the VPN and a wide and varied selection of boxes on campus which people use
as "SSH Gateways".  We should offer an Official SSH Gateway:

 -- this is in the original CSF Project Board approved plan!

 -- could/should be a virtual box

 -- having talked to Nick B it is clear that our requirements for an SSH gateway
    are very different from that of Enterprise Unix, so I believe we need our
    own

 -- I am assuming no such ITSD service yet exists --- there has been talk for
    years, but I have heard nothing

So, can we (RI) please have a virtual box for this?

Q/ Not sure about the VMWare config --- I assume there is some sort of failover
   should, for example, a rack blow up?

Q/ More on the VMWare config:  are "snapshots" kept, i.e., should such a virtual
   box get hacked (remember this box will be accessible via ssh to the entire
   public Internet and advertised as such), can we go back to, e.g., last month's
   image?

Cheers

Simon