Configuring PuTTY sessions the way working admins do

Window and appearance

• Columns and rows — 120 by 40 suits a modern widescreen monitor.
• Scrollback lines — 20,000 or more when you read logs.
• Font — Consolas or Cascadia Mono at 11 to 12 points.
• Colours — raise the contrast of blue text, which is unreadable on dark backgrounds by default.

Connection behavior

• Seconds between keepalives — 30, to survive NAT and firewall idle timers.
• Enable TCP keepalives as a second line of defense.
• Under Proxy, configure your corporate proxy if outbound port 22 is filtered.

Logging

Session logging turns a support ticket into evidence. Under Session, Logging, choose Printable output and set a filename pattern that includes the host and date, such as C:\Logs\&H-&Y&M&D.log. PuTTY expands those tokens automatically.

Per-host profiles

Change settings first, enter the host name second, then save. Doing it in the other order copies whatever was on screen into the wrong profile. Name profiles by role — prod-db, lab-switch — so the list stays readable at forty entries.

putty.exe -load "prod-db"