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Default project

While many of our users work on several cloud projects at once, these often differ greatly in scope. By setting your most frequently used project as your "default project" in your account settings, you can get going immediately after logging in. It goes without saying that you can continue to access your other projects with just two clicks of your mouse.

Search in the dropdown

You can move intuitively between your projects by selecting them from the dropdown field. And to make things even faster, simply type a few letters from the required project name (even from the middle of the word) into the open field and confirm by pressing Enter. This also works for most other dropdowns in our control panel.

Time zone and format

You will find dates and times in various places in the control panel, which allow you to see immediately when, for example, a server was created or an API token was last used. It goes without saying that time stamps also play a key role in the various logs. In your account settings, select the time zone and format that will best support you in your work.

Two-factor authentication

Protect your cloudscale.ch account with two-factor authentication (2FA). This is where, when logging in, on top of your normal password, you will be asked for a token (also known as a one-time password or OTP), which you generate with your smart phone, for example. Store the corresponding recovery code in a safe place, too, in case your smart phone is ever not available.

Login notification

Under the "Sessions" menu item you can indicate whether you want to be informed of logins to your cloudscale.ch account. Particularly in cases where you take advantage of SSO with your own identity provider to log into our control panel, it is recommended that you have an additional password-based "break glass" account with enabled notifications in case this account is actually used.

Default SSH keys

Upload the public SSH keys of your colleagues into our cloud control panel, too, so that you can grant them access from the outset when creating new servers. You can use the "star" icon to determine which of the keys should be preselected, and it goes without saying that you can adapt your selection when you launch each individual server.

Server groups

Anti-affinity ensures that correspondingly grouped servers (e.g. three web servers in a load-balancing cluster) run on different physical systems at any given time. This enables you to minimize the impact of a potential hardware problem on your overall setup. "Server groups" provides you with an overview of your existing groups, allows you to rename them if required, and to create new groups in advance, e.g. if you then want to reference them in an automated setup.

Default zone

To prepare for improbable but potentially serious events, such as fire and earthquakes, we recommend geo-redundant setups at our two cloud locations. Select the location where you carry out more frequent changes as your default zone for the project in question. When you create new servers in the web-based control panel this zone is preselected; when you launch via API, it is applied whenever a zone is not explicitly indicated in the API call.

Automatically set reverse DNS

If you want to set a specific reverse DNS entry for an IP address, you can make this change at any time via the control panel. If you specify a "Fully Qualified Domain Name" (FQDN) as the host name at the time you create a server, this is automatically used for the reverse DNS. You can, of course, change it again at any time in this case, too.

Console log

Nothing is perfect – and this applies in IT at least as much as anywhere else. If a server has stopped responding, a reboot usually helps, which you can trigger via the control panel if necessary. Have a look at the console log first. You will often find information there that the server has written to the serial console in connection with the system crash, which may help you to resolve the issue.

Host keys

The public SSH keys of the server are also output to the console log when cloud-init generates them during the initial boot-up. Our system collects them from there and displays the corresponding fingerprints in the control panel. This allows you to verify that you are communicating directly with the correct server at the very first SSH connection – even before it can be checked using your known_hosts file.

Everyone has an individual working style and, in many cases, different approaches lead to the desired result. So, make sure you use the defaults and features in a way that suits you and your projects. For collaborative work on cloud resources, you can find even more guidance in Collaboration – the key concepts, and we have compiled a few tips for your optimal cloud setup in How to Make Optimal Use of Our Infrastructure.

Well thought out from all angles,
Your cloudscale.ch team