Getting started
What you get when you order, and what to do in the first ten minutes.
What a Maple Key is
A Maple Key is a virtual machine — a whole computer, running on our hardware in Canada, that only you have access to. It has its own processor cores, its own memory, its own disk, and its own address on the internet. Nobody else shares it.
That means you can install anything you like on it, and it also means nothing is installed for you unless you picked an app when you ordered.
What happens after you order
The whole process usually finishes in two to five minutes. Apps that have to download a lot — Nextcloud, Minecraft — take longer to become usable than they take to report ready, because the first launch is still unpacking in the background.
- We clone a fresh Ubuntu server for you — this takes a few seconds.
- Your server boots and configures itself: firewall, automatic security updates, and your chosen app if you picked one.
- The console page turns green and shows you how to connect.
The console page
Every server has a console page, reached from your dashboard. It is the one page worth bookmarking. It shows your SSH command and port, your initial passwords, a link to your app if it has a web interface, and your snapshots.
Your initial password is shown there because it was generated for you and never sent by email. Change it after your first login.
If you only read one page in these docs, make it Securing your server. A server on the public internet starts getting probed by automated scanners within minutes of coming online — that is normal, and the defaults we ship handle it, but the hardening steps matter.