Central management

Hand a central panel full management access to this server with one key — and take it back with one button.

Admin Panel → Central connects this server to ServerAvatar's central panel, so it can be managed alongside your other servers from one place. The connection is one key, generated here and pasted there.

If you only ever use this panel directly, leave it alone. The Admin Dashboard tile reads "Not connected · Managed from this panel only", which is a perfectly good permanent state.

Central management, not connected

Read the warning first

The red panel above the button is the honest description of what the key is, and it is not softened anywhere:

This key has full administrator access. Anyone holding it can create and delete applications, databases, system users and firewall rules on this server. The key cannot be limited or made read-only.

There is no scoped key, no read-only key and no expiry. One key, everything, until you revoke it.

The third sentence is the mitigation: anything done with it is recorded in the activity log under a separate account, so you can tell it apart from your own changes. Central's work and your work never blur together in the activity log.

Connect

Press Generate connection key. A confirmation asks you to tick an acknowledgement before the button becomes available — you cannot click past this one.

Allow Central management?

Copy the key. It is shown once, right after it is created.

The generated key, shown once

If you lose it you do not recover it; you generate a new one, which invalidates this one.

Paste it into your central panel, then press I've saved it here.

The card settles into its connected state. The badge reads Key active, and the key itself is now masked — only its prefix is shown.

Connected, with the key masked

What Central may not do

Central signs in as an administrator, which would be enough to take the panel over with one leaked key: reset an administrator's password, create a new administrator, hand out roles. So a specific set of endpoints refuses a centrally-authenticated caller outright, however valid the key is:

Creating, editing or deleting users
Resetting a user's password
Changing a user's roles
Impersonating a user

Reading users and roles is still allowed. The principle is narrow and deliberate: who may run this server is decided here, by the people who run it.

Rotate or disconnect

Two buttons sit on the connected card.

Generate a new key replaces the current one. The old key stops working immediately, and Central loses access until you paste the new one in — so do it with the central panel open.

Disconnect revokes the key and connects nothing in its place.

Disconnect Central?

The dialog is clear that this is immediate and that work in flight dies with it: "Central loses access to this server immediately, and anything it is doing right now will fail. You can reconnect later, but it will need a new key."

Afterwards the card returns to its first state, with Generate connection key offered again.

Limits worth knowing

One key at a time. Generating a new one revokes the old one; there is no list of keys and no second connection.
No expiry and no scope. The key is valid until you revoke it, and it cannot be narrowed.
The key is never shown again. Only a prefix is displayed after the first reveal.
Connecting does not change your own access. You keep signing in to this panel exactly as before; Central is an additional caller, not a replacement.
Disconnecting does not undo anything Central did. Applications and databases it created stay where they are.