# SSH to an instance from Windows

## SSH to an instance from Windows

You can use the [PuTTY](http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/) program as an SSH client to connect to your machine.

{% hint style="info" %}
This page gives you basic information about using PuTTY and PuTTYgen to log in to your provisioned machine. For more information on PuTTY, see the official PuTTY documentation.
{% endhint %}

If you are using Windows and you want to connect to your machine using a more Unix-like approach, you may want to consider [Cygwin](http://www.cygwin.com/) instead.

This topic shows you how to log in to your machine as the root user using the Windows program PuTTY.

When you provision a machine, the Machine Details page will display two different IP addresses: a public IP address and a private IP address. Take note of these IP addresses as **you will use the public IP to connect to your machine**.

To log in to your machine, follow these instructions:

* Open the PuTTY program.
* Type the public IP address of your provisioned machine in the **Host Name (or IP address)** field.
* In the **Category** panel on the left, expand the SSH section to expose the Auth settings.

![](/files/-LuiYLu34U_9eNyBmrNP)

* Click **Auth** to display the Options controlling SSH authentication panel.
* Click **Browse** and select the private key file you created. This is the private key you saved when you \[manually generating your SSH key in Windows]\(Manually Generating Your SSH Key in Windows.html).

![](/files/-LuiYbk3rwINvrtPm-La)

* Click **Open** to open a PuTTY terminal session.

{% hint style="info" %}
The first time you connect to your machine, you may see a **PuTTY Security Alert** warning you that the host's key is not cached in the the registry. This is normal because PuTTY has never seen this machine before. Go ahead and click **Yes**.
{% endhint %}

#### Follow These Steps to Login

* At the `login as:` prompt, type "root" and press ENTER.

{% hint style="info" %}
**Note**: For Ubuntu based instances, the default username is "ubuntu".
{% endhint %}

```
login as: root
Authenticating with public key "rsa-key-20120104"
Passphrase for key "rsa-key-20120104":
```

* Type the passphrase you chose for this key and press ENTER.

You are now logged into your machine.

Once you are connected to a machine, you can start setting up your application.


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