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Creating a virtual private network (VPN) between your desktop or laptop and a VPN service within the Rapid Access Cloud, allows you access to the private IP address of instances associated with your project (e.g. 10.0.0.73; 10.1.1.9; etc.). This is best if you need access to the resources you have created in the Rapid Access Cloud for computational experiments for example, but do not need to offer public services to the internet over IPv4, like web applications or email.

The VPN will need to be manually started each time you wish to access the private network and only computers that have connected to the VPN in this manner can access the private network, however multiple computers can access the network at the same time if they each have the VPN configured.


Mac OS X

  1. Install Tunnelblick, a free OpenVPN application for Mac OSX.

  2. Download the Rapid Access Cloud VPN configuration files. VPN access is configured per region:

    1. Calgary

    2. Edmonton

  3. Unzip the file locally and double-click the unzipped file vpn-yyc.tblk. This will automatically run Tunnelblick and add the VPN configuration.

  4. In the top right corner of your screen, you will see the Tunnelblick icon. Click on it and choose "Connect vpn-yyc".

  5. When prompted, enter your RAC username and password. To check whether the VPN is working, open a terminal and attempt to ping a private IP address associated with an instance. For example, “ping 10.0.0.73”.

Windows

  1. Download and Install the community version of OpenVPN from openvpn.net.

  2. Download the Rapid Access Cloud VPN configuration files. VPN access is configured per region:

    1. Calgary

    2. Edmonton

  3. Unzip then copy the contents to c:\Program Files\OpenVPN\config.

  4. On the Windows Desktop, right-click on the OpenVPN GUI shortcut, select Properties and then the Compatibility tab. Check the box to "Run this program as an administrator".

  5. Double-click on the OpenVPN GUI shortcut and an OpenVPN icon should now appear on your taskbar.

  6. Right-click on the OpenVPN taskbar icon and choose "connect".

  7. When prompted, enter your Rapid Access Cloud username and password. To check whether the VPN is working, open a terminal and attempt to ping your private IP address. For example, “ping 10.0.0.73”.

Ubuntu Linux

  1. Install and configure the openvpn package for your distribution: 

    $ sudo apt-get install openvpn 

  2. Download the Rapid Access Cloud VPN configuration files. VPN access is configured per region:

    1. Calgary

    2. Edmonton

  3. Unzip the file and note the path where it is located. /etc/openvpn would be a good location to store it.

  4. You can either interactively enter your Rapid Access Cloud account credentials each time or store the credentials in a text file.

    1. To interactively enter Rapid Access Cloud account credentials each time: 

      sudo openvpn --config /path/to/config.ovpn
<enter RAC email>
<enter RAC password>
 
# Put process in background
<ctrl-z>    # suspend process
bg          # resume suspended process and sends to background
disown -h   # process is not killed when terminal is shutdown

    2. To store your credentials in a text file so you don't have to enter it each time. Replace rac-username and rac-password with the username/email and password for your Rapid Access Cloud account.

      sudo su
touch /etc/openvpn/rac-credentials
printf '%s\n' 'rac-username' 'rac-password' > /etc/openvpn/rac-credentials
sed -i 's/auth-user-pass/auth-user-pass \/etc\/openvpn\/rac-credentials/g' /path/to/config.ovpn
 
# To start vpn in background
nohup openvpn --config /path/to/config.ovpn &
# process output will be logged in nohup.out

  5. To check whether the VPN is working, open a terminal and attempt to ping your private IP address. For example, “ping 10.0.0.73”.

  6. To disconnect from the VPN: 

    sudo killall openvpn
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