PWD + SSH = ❤

We’re constantly looking for different ways to help technology enthusiasts to play with new stuff and at the same time provide the same experience that they’d expect in a real world / production environment. One project we did some time ago that got us closer to this goal is the PWD docker-machine driver which allows users to create and manage their PWD hosts extremely easy through their favorite terminal. Below is a short video we presented during DockerCon US 2017 which showcases how the machine driver works.

One limitation that the driver had mainly because how PWD worked, was the fact that you couldn’t use any ssh related commands. This prevented us from using PWD transparently as if you were using any cloud VM that you’d usually ssh/scp into. After some clever ideas, we came up with a solution that brings the missing pieces together and from now on ssh and scp is fully capable within PWD. Here’s how it works:

To use this feature, grab the latest PWD machine driver for your platform from HERE and start using it right away!.

Additionally, if you don’t like/have docker-machine you can directly ssh into the instances using the following pattern: ssh -p 1022 <instance_ip_with_dashes>-<short_session_id>@pwdhost (i.e: ssh -p 1022 10–0–1–3–48a594c4@host1.labs.play-with-docker.com)

Any ideas, suggestions or feedback are always welcome.

The PWD team.