How I Manage My SSH Keys Across Multiple Servers and GitHub

Originally published at kjetilfuras.com Managing SSH keys across multiple servers and platforms can get messy fast — especially when you have a homelab, VPS, GitHub repos, and more. I used to juggle one or two keys across everything… until I hit name collisions, agent confusion, and “wrong key” errors. Now I generate one key per service or server , store them with meaningful filenames, and use an organized ~/.ssh/config to control how each is used. Here’s how I do it — and how you can too. My SSH Key Directory Structure ~/.ssh/ ├── id_ed25519_homelab ├── id_ed25519_homelab.pub ├── id_ed25519_hetzner ├── id_ed25519_hetzner.pub ├── id_ed25519_github ├── id_ed25519_github.pub ├── config My Key Setup Process 1. Generate a Separate Key for Each Server ssh-keygen -t ed25519 -C "docker-01" -f ~/.ssh/id_ed25519_docker_01 ssh-keygen -t ed25519 -C "pve-1" -f ~/.ssh/id_ed25519_pve_1 ssh-keygen -t ed25519 -C "hetzner" -f ~/.ssh/id_ed25519_hetzner_example ssh-keygen -t ed25519 -C "github" -f ~/.ssh