Launch a Cloud Instance

In this tutorial we’re going to launch two cloud instances and connect them together using the Meshify VPN Service. We will be using Amazon AWS in this example. The process is even easier on Azure.

Subscribe to the Image

The first step is to subscribe to the image. Find the image you’d like to launch from the Cloud Services page. For this example we’re choosing the Ubuntu 22 Desktop with Meshify VPN Service for ARM64, and provisioning a t4g.medium.

After subscribing continue on to configuration:

image subscription page

And choose the location to launch the instance, among other things:

configure the region, etc.

The region can be practically anywhere in the world, in case that is of interest.

Continue to Launch

After making your selections, click Continue to Launch. Be sure to have access to the keypair you use to launch the instance. After it has launched, open a command prompt and ssh into the machine:

ssh into the host and set a password for the default user

Enter the command above to change the default user’s password. You can also add additional users here if desired. You can logout when you’re done.

Create a Mesh

While waiting for the instance to launch, login to the Meshify Admin Console and create a new mesh by clicking on the MESHES tab and then clicking the Create New Mesh button.

Specify “aws” for the name of the mesh, and “10.10.10.0/24” for the subnet. Click submit.

Launch Remote Desktop

Open Remote Desktop by typing “mstsc.exe” into the start menu of Windows. Enter the public IP address of the instance launched and click connect.

Enter ubuntu for the user and the password you just created. After a moment, the desktop will appear.

From the Applications menu, click “Internet” and then “meshifyagent” to launch the Meshify Agent.

Setup the Host

Click Login and login using the same method and credentials you initially used to log into the service.

login to meshify to add the host to a mesh

After logging in, click on “Add to Mesh”:

Specify a name (that will resolve through DNS) as well as the mesh. If this is a public endpoint specify the public IP address, colon, 51820. Ensure the listen port is also set to 51820. Click Submit when done.

Congratulations! You created your first mesh and added your first host. Repeat the process with the second host. When done, open a terminal and ping the other machine.

Now that you see what you can do, spin up other resources. Make databases, web servers. You can build a complete backend using Meshify. It’s that simple.