How to setup an SSH Jump server using Digital Ocean?

Posted on December 17, 2020

Hi - I would like to know the best practices to setup an SSH Jump server (sometimes referred to as a jumpbox) that acts as an intermediary host or an SSH gateway to a remote network with a Digital Ocean droplet.

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alexdo

December 17, 2020

Hello, @zabius

You can basically create a droplet that will be used as a jumpbox to connect to your other droplets/servers. Than on the jumpbox you can setup ssh-keys which you will later on upload to the servers you’re going to access from the jumpbox.

You can check the following tutorials for the ssh-keys:

How To Set Up SSH Keys How-to Add SSH Keys to New or Existing Droplets

You can also make sure that the jumpbox is secure in order to use it without any hesitation. You can check the following tutorials:

Recommended Security Measures to Protect Your Servers Recommended Initial Droplet Configuration Initial Server Setup - You can select other OS if you’re planning to use CentOS for example

Let me know if you have any questions.

Hope that this helps! Regards, Alex

Bobby

December 18, 2020

Hi there @zabius,

Fully agree with what @alexdo mentioned already. In addition, I could add a couple of things:

Make sure to have a firewall on the server, you could either go with a software firewall like UFW or CSF, or go with a Cloud Firewall
Follow the steps from this tutorial here on how to harden your OpenSSH service:

https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-harden-openssh-on-ubuntu-18-04

Regards, Bobby