Setting up a central bastion/jump server

With several developers and a great deal of production servers we need access to, managing SSH keys and access across them all was getting complex with potential for mistakes and missed authentication. Instead, we decided to set up a bastion/jump host (with a redundant backup) - this means the client servers need just 2 SSH keys added and we manage authentication and access for the team in a central location. Note: This post has been sitting in my drafts for years and I'm posting it out of posterity. We've since moved to a more robust solution which I'll blog about later This is managed by a central, private, git repository which is synced to both servers regularly - enabling addition (and revocation) of clients and staff, with a central source of truth. Our set up was mainly based off/inspired by Zander's Jump Host [https://zanderwork.com/blog/jump-host/] blog post. SETUP This assumes a Debian VPS server. SSH in and update the basic packages along with installing required…