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Datacenter access

Armbian runs a hardware lab — the Datacenter — a rack of real boards on real networks that our CI flashes, powers, boots, tests and measures automatically. Board maintainers can reach these boards remotely to debug problems, reproduce issues and validate images on actual hardware.

The Armbian Datacenter rack

Access is over a VPN and is available to members of the board-maintainers GitHub team. Everything below (VPN login and board access) only works once you are on that team.

Requesting access

The board-maintainers team is a visible team, so organization members can request to join it themselves:

  • If you are already an Armbian GitHub organization member — open the board-maintainers team page and click Request to join. A team maintainer reviews and approves it.
  • If you are not an organization member yet — every contributor is automatically invited to become a member of the Armbian organization, so contribute (e.g. a merged pull request) and accept the invitation that follows. Once you are an org member, request to join the team as above.

Connect via VPN (Netbird)

The Datacenter network is reached through Netbird, a WireGuard-based mesh VPN. Authentication is via GitHub: you sign in with your GitHub account and are let in if you belong to the board-maintainers team.

1. Install the Netbird client

On Linux:

Bash
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curl -fsSL https://pkgs.netbird.io/install.sh | sh

On macOS and Windows, install the client from netbird.io/downloads (or via brew, winget, etc.).

2. Connect to Armbian’s Netbird

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netbird up --management-url https://netbird.armbian.com

This opens your browser to authenticate:

  1. On the Netbird sign-in screen, choose Continue with Authentik.

    Netbird sign-in — Continue with Authentik

  2. On the Armbian Auth screen, click the GitHub icon (the button below Log in — not the email/username field) and authorize the request.

    Armbian Auth — sign in with GitHub

Once GitHub confirms you are a board-maintainers member you are connected to the Datacenter mesh. The management URL is remembered, so next time you can just run netbird up.

Check the connection and your assigned VPN address:

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netbird status

To disconnect, run netbird down.

Access boards

Once connected you are on the Datacenter network and can reach the boards directly by their IP address.

Find the board you need — its model and IP address — in the Boards list below, then SSH in as root:

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ssh root@<board-ip>        # e.g. ssh root@10.0.50.42

No password is needed — every board installs the SSH public keys from your GitHub account (https://github.com/<your-username>.keys) into root’s authorized keys, so make sure the matching private key is on the machine you connect from.

If a board is unreachable it may be powered off or mid-test. For anything you cannot resolve (missing access, a wedged board), reach out on the Armbian Discord channels.

Reflashing is under testing

Automated board reflashing is still experimental. If you reflash a board and accidentally brick it or leave it unresponsive, please report it on the Armbian Discord so it can be recovered.

Boards

The datacenter’s board inventory — which boards are operational or broken — now lives on the Datacenter boards status page.