Scaling Privileged Access for Modern Infrastructure: Real-World Insights
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Teleport

Database Access FAQ

Version 15.x

Which database protocols does Teleport the Database Service support?

The Teleport Database Service currently supports the following protocols:

  • Cassandra
  • ClickHouse
  • CockroachDB
  • DynamoDB
  • MariaDB
  • Microsoft SQL Server
  • MongoDB
  • MySQL
  • Oracle
  • PostgreSQL
  • Redis
  • Snowflake

For PostgreSQL and MySQL, the following Cloud-hosted versions are supported in addition to self-hosted deployments:

  • Amazon RDS
  • Amazon Aurora (except for Amazon Aurora Serverless, which doesn't support IAM authentication)
  • Amazon Redshift
  • Google Cloud SQL
  • Azure Database

See the available guides for all supported configurations.

Which PostgreSQL protocol features are not supported?

The following PostgreSQL protocol features aren't currently supported:

  • Any authentication methods except for client certificate authentication and IAM authentication for cloud databases.

Are database sessions listed under recorded sessions?

You can view database session activity in the audit log. After a session is uploaded, you can play back the audit data with the tsh play command.

Database session ID will be in a UUID format (ex: 307b49d6-56c7-4d20-8cf0-5bc5348a7101) See the audit log to get a database session ID with a key of sid.

Example:

tsh play --format json database.session
    {
        "cluster_name": "teleport.example.com",
        "code": "TDB02I",
        "db_name": "example",
        "db_origin": "dynamic",
        "db_protocol": "postgres",
        "db_query": "select * from sample;",
        "db_roles": [
            "access"
        ],
        "db_service": "example",
        "db_type": "rds",
        "db_uri": "databases-1.us-east-1.rds.amazonaws.com:5432",
        "db_user": "alice",
        "ei": 2,
        "event": "db.session.query",
        "sid": "307b49d6-56c7-4d20-8cf0-5bc5348a7101",
        "success": true,
        "time": "2023-10-06T10:58:32.88Z",
        "uid": "a649d925-9dac-44cc-bd04-4387c295580f",
        "user": "alice"
    }

The audit log is viewable in Activity under Management in the Web UI for users with permission to the event resources. Database sessions do not appear in the session recordings page.

Can database clients use a public address different from the web public address?

When configuring the Teleport Proxy Service, administrators can set the postgres_public_addr and mysql_public_addr configuration fields to public addresses over which respective database clients should connect. See Proxy Configuration for more details.

This is useful when the Teleport Web UI is running behind an L7 load balancer (e.g. ALB in AWS), in which case the PostgreSQL/MySQL proxy needs to be exposed on a plain TCP load balancer (e.g. NLB in AWS).

In Teleport Enterprise Cloud, the Proxy Service uses the following ports for Database Service client traffic:

Configuration settingPort
mysql_public_addr3036
postgres_public_addr443
mongo_public_addr443

Do you support X database client?

Teleport relies on client certificates for authentication, so any database client that supports this method of authentication and uses modern TLS (1.2+) should work.

Standard command-line clients such as psql, mysql, mongo or mongosh are supported. There are also instructions for configuring select graphical clients.

When will you support X database?

We plan to support more databases in the future based on customer demand.

See if the database you're interested in has already been requested among GitHub issues or open a new issue to register your interest.

Can I provide a custom CA certificate?

Yes, you can pass custom CA certificate by using a configuration file (look at ca_cert_file).

Can I provide a custom DNS name for Teleport generated CA?

Yes, use server_name under the tls section in your Teleport configuration file. Please look on our reference configuration file for more details.

Can I disable CA verification when connecting to a database?

Yes, although it is not recommended. Certificate verification prevents person-in-the-middle attacks and makes sure that you are connected to the database that you intended to.

Teleport also allows you to edit your configuration file to provide a custom CA certificate (ca_cert_file) or custom DNS name (server_name), which is more secure.

If none of the above options work for you and you still want to disable the CA check, you can use mode under the tls option in the Teleport configuration file.

For more details please refer to the reference configuration file.

Can I disable read-only and custom endpoints from auto-discovered databases?

Yes, you can use the Teleport generated label endpoint-type on your aws matcher to filter the endpoints. For example, to disable read-only and custom endpoints for RDS auto-discovery, you can specify other endpoint types to match:

  aws:
  - types: ["rds"]
    regions: ["us-west-1"]
    tags:
      "env": "dev"
      "endpoint-type":
        - "primary"
        - "instance"

See labels reference for a full list of Teleport generated labels and values.