Virtual Workspaces

Using Science Clouds with Virtual Private Networks

Some clouds will only connect your VM to a virtual private network. This may be dictated by site security policies or simply because public IP addresses are not available for VMs hosted on a cloud. The workspace cloud client works with virtual private network implementations but in order to use it in this way you will need to first join a virtual private network of the site you are working with. To do so, follow the steps below:

• Download and install the OpenVPN client. (We recommend version 2.1.) For MacOS users, if you don't have tun/tap device drivers, they can be obtained from here (and seem to work despite the dire warnings).
• Check the configuration notes for the cloud you want to use: they will point you to the OpenVPN client configuration file to use. Download this file and save it as something like "my/config/location" file.
• Modify the configuration file to point to the correct locations for (1) the CA certificate that signed your credential, (2) the user certificate you use to log in, and (3) the private key associated with this certificate (search for "ca", "cert", and "key" or "SSL/TLS parms" comment). Please note: we currently assume that you will use the same certificate for VPN access and cloud access -- this means that you only have to mail one DN to the cloud administrator (if for some reason this does not work for you mail the cloud administrator).
• Go to the directory where your openvpn has been installed (or do the usual path setup) and run the OpenVPN client to connect to the private network on the cloud like so:
  $ ./openvpn --config /my/config/location

• Test your vpn installation by pinging an address given to you by the administrator of your cloud.