CreateKeyPair - Elastic Compute Service - Alibaba Cloud Documentation Center

Creates an SSH key pair. The system stores the public key and returns the unencrypted private key. The private key is encoded with PEM in the PKCS#8 format. You must properly store the private key and ensure its confidentiality.

Operation description

In addition to calling the CreateKeyPair operation to create a key pair, you can use a third-party tool to create a key pair and then call the ImportKeyPair operation to upload the key pair to an Alibaba Cloud region.

Up to 500 key pairs can be created in each region. For more information, see the "SSH key pair limits" section in Limits .

Debugging

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Debug

Authorization information

The following table shows the authorization information corresponding to the API. The authorization information can be used in the Action policy element to grant a RAM user or RAM role the permissions to call this API operation. Description:

Operation: the value that you can use in the Action element to specify the operation on a resource.
Access level: the access level of each operation. The levels are read, write, and list.
Resource type: the type of the resource on which you can authorize the RAM user or the RAM role to perform the operation. Take note of the following items:
- The required resource types are displayed in bold characters.
- If the permissions cannot be granted at the resource level, All Resources is used in the Resource type column of the operation.
Condition Key: the condition key that is defined by the cloud service.
Associated operation: other operations that the RAM user or the RAM role must have permissions to perform to complete the operation. To complete the operation, the RAM user or the RAM role must have the permissions to perform the associated operations.

Operation	Access level	Resource type	Condition key	Associated operation
ecs:CreateKeyPair	create	KeyPair `acs:ecs:{#regionId}:{#accountId}:keypair/`	none	none

Request parameters

Parameter	Type	Required	Description	Example
RegionId	string	Yes	The ID of the region in which to create the key pair. You can call the DescribeRegions operation to query the most recent region list.	cn-hangzhou
KeyPairName	string	Yes	The name of the key pair. The name must be 2 to 128 characters in length. The name must start with a letter and cannot start with `http://` or `https://`. The name can contain letters, digits, colons (:), underscores (_), and hyphens (-).	testKeyPairName
ResourceGroupId	string	No	The ID of the resource group to which to add the key pair.	rg-bp67acfmxazb4p****
Tag	array<object>	No	The tags of the key pair.
	object	No
Key	string	No	The key of tag N to add to the key pair. Valid values of N: 1 to 20. The tag key cannot be an empty string. The tag key can be up to 128 characters in length and cannot contain `http://` or `https://`. The tag key cannot start with `acs:` or `aliyun`.	TestKey
Value	string	No	The value of tag N to add to the key pair. Valid values of N: 1 to 20. The tag value can be an empty string. The tag value can be up to 128 characters in length and cannot contain http:// or https://. The tag value cannot start with acs:.	TestValue

Response parameters

Parameter	Type	Description	Example
	object
PrivateKeyBody	string	The private key of the key pair. The private key is encoded with PEM in the PKCS#8 format.	MIIEpAIBAAKCAQEAtReyMzLIcBH78EV2zj****
KeyPairName	string	The name of the key pair.	testKeyPairName
KeyPairId	string	The ID of the key pair.	ssh-bp67acfmxazb4p****
RequestId	string	The request ID.	473469C7-AA6F-4DC5-B3DB-A3DC0DE3C83E
KeyPairFingerPrint	string	The fingerprint of the key pair. The message-digest algorithm 5 (MD5) is used based on the public key fingerprint format defined in RFC 4716. For more information, see RFC 4716.	89:f0:ba:62:ac:b8:aa:e1:61:5e:fd:81:69:86:6d:6b:f0:c0:5a:**

Examples

Sample success responses

JSONformat

{
  "PrivateKeyBody": "MIIEpAIBAAKCAQEAtReyMzLIcBH78EV2zj****",
  "KeyPairName": "testKeyPairName",
  "KeyPairId": "ssh-bp67acfmxazb4p****",
  "RequestId": "473469C7-AA6F-4DC5-B3DB-A3DC0DE3C83E",
  "KeyPairFingerPrint": "89:f0:ba:62:ac:b8:aa:e1:61:5e:fd:81:69:86:6d:6b:f0:c0:5a:**"
}

Error codes

HTTP status code	Error code	Error message	Description
400	InvalidKeyPairName.Malformed	Specified Key Pair name is not valid.	-
400	KeyPair.AlreadyExist	The key pair already exist.	A key pair with the same name already exists. Key pair names must be unique.
400	Duplicate.TagKey	The Tag.N.Key contain duplicate key.	The specified tag key already exists. Tag keys must be unique.
400	InvalidTagKey.Malformed	The specified Tag.n.Key is not valid.	The specified Tag.N.Key parameter is invalid.
400	InvalidTagValue.Malformed	The specified Tag.n.Value is not valid.	The specified tag value is invalid.
403	QuotaExceed.KeyPair	The key pair quota exceeds.	The maximum number of key pairs has been reached.
403	QuotaExceed.Tags	%s	The number of specified tags exceeds the upper limit. %s is a variable. An error message is dynamically returned based on call conditions.
404	InvalidRegionId.NotFound	The RegionId provided does not exist in our records.	The RegionId provided does not exist
404	InvalidResourceGroup.NotFound	The ResourceGroup provided does not exist in our records.	The specified resource group does not exist.

For a list of error codes, visit the Service error codes.

Change history

Change time	Summary of changes	Operation
2024-12-17	API Description Update. The Error code has changed	View Change Details