Can't connect with password or SSH Key to restored backup

Question

Hi all, I've been thrown into supporting this Azure account with very little familarity. More experienced with AWS.

We had a server failure on a Virtual Machine so I recreated the VM from a backup and moved the Network Configuration over to the new VM. The site is now back up, but I can't figure out how to connect to the new VM. On the old VM I has a user/pass I could use to SSH/SFTP into the server with. That doesn't seem to work anymore, though the new VM is a backup clone of the old. I tried creating a new SSH Key but that's now working either. I'm not sure what "Login username" to use in the command they give here ssh -i <private key path> <Login username>@52.160.107.155

Thanks!

Answer 1

Hello, @Lance Quaro !

No worries, we'll try to help you get this sorted out.

If the VM is stuck in a failed state, you can redeploy the VM in the portal or with the CLI pretty quickly. It's also possible to restore a VM if you have a specific recovery point/restore point that you are interested in although this is a much more involved process.

What process did you use for recovering the failed VM?

As far as the "Login username", this refers to the admin username that part of creating a Linux VM. Using the Azure CLI it would be the --admin-username value in az vm create and in the portal it would be Username on Basics (the first screen) under Administrator account:

If you go to the portal, you can see what this username is by going to your VM resource and clicking on Connect under Settings on the left:

If all else fails, you can Reset password in your VM resource (Support + troubleshooting > Reset password). This will allow you to reset the SSH key and assign a username.