Microsoft Windows has come a long way since 95 and I think Windows 10 is the best iteration, with this one going the “as a service” implementation route. To cut to the chase if you are someone who has to use SSH to connect to servers you can now do it natively from inside PowerShell or CMD. (I know, I know, PuTTY is always there to save the day 😛 )

To check if the computer has the version of Windows 10 which already has the SSH client configured, all you have to do is type “ssh” inside PowerShell and if you see the same output as in the image below you are good to go!

In a real world scenario, if you want to connect to a Virtual Machine, say an EC2 Instance in AWS, you will have to meet two conditions:

1. Make sure that the key you have is in OpenSSH format (puTTYgen to the rescue in case you want to convert a ppk)

2. Make sure that the key file has the appropriate permissions. To do this from the ui you can follow these steps

Right click on the file->Go to Security->Advanced->Disable inheritance-> Select the first option “Convert inherited permissions…”-> Remove all the other accounts that you find in the permissions tab and only leave the account that you use. Make sure that the same account is the owner of the file.