Connect to the VM console

If you lock yourself out of your VM, you can use the console to access it.

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Connect to a VM console using the control panel

If you accidentally lock yourself out of SSH or Remote Desktop, for example, due to a firewall rule, you can still access the virtual machine through the console. This is equivalent to having physical access to a server's screen and keyboard.

To locate the console, navigate to Virtual machines in the left-hand menu under Compute. Here, select the virtual machine you locked yourself out of. In the VM overview, select Actions in the top-right corner. From there, click Console.

The console starts automatically. If it does not, click Open console manually in the following dialog box.

Most of the time, you need to use an English keyboard layout in Linux to align with the system's keyboard configuration. This is also the default setting in the console. To find special characters, you can use the virtual keyboard. If you need to change the keyboard layout, click the dropdown menu for the language and select a different option.

In Microsoft Windows, you can always log in through the console because all users have a password assigned to them. Click the Send Ctrl-Alt-Del button to unlock the login screen if it is not displayed.

If you have set a password for your user in Linux, you can log in with that user in the console. However, if none of your users have a password, you cannot log in directly via the console. In that case, you need to restart the server in single-user mode.

Log in to single-user mode

To start your VM in single-user mode, for example, to reset your password, see Reset your password in Linux.

Connect to a VM console using the API

It's also possible to get a URL for the console window by making an API call to the endpoint server/console.