Permission denied could be several things. By default, SSH with the root account is disabled, so hopefully that's not what you were trying to do. Also, if you are using SSH keys, you'll need to make sure the .ssh directory in your home directory and the files within have tight permissions: 600 for .ssh and 500 for the key file. Beyond that, try connecting with ssh using the -vvv option to show the verbose client logging. This might clue you into the problem. If you are able to get on the server, you can also run a "tail -f /var/log/auth.log" to see some what might be occurring with each attempt.