The host switcher that provides connections to multiple machines through SSH from a single RHEL web console session is deprecated and disabled by default. Due to the web technology limitations, this feature cannot be secure.

In the short term, you can enable the host switcher after assessing the risks in your scenario with the AllowMultiHost option in the cockpit.conf file:

[WebService]
AllowMultiHost=yes

As more secure alternatives, you can use:

• the web console login page (with the secure limit of one host in a web browser session)
• the Cockpit Client flatpak

The web console enforces a default limit of 500 concurrent HTTP connections to protect the host against denial-of-service (DoS) and socket exhaustion. The web console rejects connection attempts that exceed this threshold before it processes inbound traffic.

Environments with heavy administrative traffic, automated management tools, or reverse proxies can reach this limit and encounter dropped connections. To adjust this capacity, set the MaxConcurrentConnectionsoption in the [WebService] section of the /etc/cockpit/cockpit.conf configuration file.

Unlike the MaxStartups option, which limits concurrent unauthenticated login attempts, the MaxConcurrentConnections option restricts total connections at the HTTP layer.