Database Access with PostgreSQL on GCP Cloud SQL

This guide will help you to:

• Set up Teleport to access your PostgreSQL on Google Cloud SQL.
• Connect to your databases through Teleport.

Prerequisites

• Google Cloud account
• A host, e.g., a Compute Engine instance, where you will run the Teleport Database Service

tsh login --proxy=teleport.example.com [email protected]
tctl status
Cluster  teleport.example.com
Version  9.3.7
CA pin   sha256:abdc1245efgh5678abdc1245efgh5678abdc1245efgh5678abdc1245efgh5678

tsh login --proxy=myinstance.teleport.sh [email protected]
tctl status
Cluster  myinstance.teleport.sh
Version  9.3.8
CA pin   sha256:sha-hash-here

Step 1/7. Enable Cloud SQL IAM authentication

Teleport uses IAM database authentication with Cloud SQL PostgreSQL instances.

If you're creating a new PostgreSQL instance, make sure to add the cloudsql.iam_authentication database flag under "Customize your instance / Flags" section:

To check whether IAM authentication is enabled for an existing Cloud SQL instance, look for the flag on the Configuration panel on the instance's Overview page:

If it isn't enabled, you can add this flag using the "Edit configuration" dialog at the bottom of the Configuration panel. Note, changing this setting may require a database instance reboot.

Step 2/7. Create a service account for the database

Teleport uses service accounts to connect to Cloud SQL databases.

Create a service account

Go to the IAM & Admin Service Accounts page and create a new service account:

Press "Create".

Grant permissions

On the second step grant this service account the "Cloud SQL Instance User" role which will allow it to connect to Cloud SQL instances using IAM token for authentication:

Press "Done".

Configure authentication for your service account

Now go back to the Users page of your Cloud SQL instance and add a new user account. In the sidebar, choose "Cloud IAM" authentication type and add the service account you've just created:

Press "Add" and your Users table should look similar to this:

See Creating and managing IAM users in Google Cloud documentation for more info.

Step 3/7. Create a service account for Teleport Database Service

The final part of GCP configuration is to create a service account for the Teleport Database Service.

Create a service account

Go to the Service Accounts page and create a service account:

Grant permissions

Assign the Service Account the following IAM roles:

• "Service Account Token Creator" will allow the Database Service to generate IAM authentication tokens when connecting to the database as the service account user we created above.
• Either "Cloud SQL Viewer" or "Cloud SQL Admin":
  • "Cloud SQL Viewer" will allow the Database Service to automatically download your Cloud SQL instance's root CA certificate, but does not support client certificate authentication.
  • "Cloud SQL Admin" will allow the Database Service to automatically download your Cloud SQL instance's root CA certificate and generate an ephemeral client certificate when the GCP instance is configured to "Allow only SSL connections."

Assign it the "Service Account Token Creator" role:

# Used to generate IAM auth tokens when connecting to a database instance.
iam.serviceAccounts.getAccessToken
# Used to auto-download the instance's root CA certificate.
cloudsql.instances.get
# Used to generate an ephemeral client certificate when the GCP instance
# is configured to "Allow only SSL connections." (optional)
cloudsql.sslCerts.createEphemeral

Create a key for the service account

Once created, go to that service account's Keys tab and create a new key:

Make sure to choose JSON format:

Save the file. The Teleport Database Service will need it to be able to generate IAM auth tokens.

Step 4/7. Gather Cloud SQL instance information

To connect a Cloud SQL database to Teleport, you'll need to gather a few pieces of information about the instance.

• GCP Project ID.

You can normally see it in the organization view at the top of the GCP dashboard.

• Cloud SQL instance ID.

The instance ID is the name of your Cloud SQL instance shown at the top of the Overview page:

• Cloud SQL instance endpoint.

You will use the instance's public IP address to connect to it. It can be viewed on the "Connect to this instance" panel on the Overview page:

• Cloud SQL instance root certificate.

The instance's root certificate is required so Teleport can validate the certificate presented by the database instance. You can download server-ca.pem file from the Connections tab under Security section:

Step 5/7. Set up the Teleport Auth and Proxy services

Teleport Database Access for Cloud SQL PostgreSQL is available starting from the 6.2 Teleport release.

teleport configure --acme [email protected] --cluster-name=tele.example.com > /etc/teleport.yaml

proxy_service:
  enabled: "yes"
  web_listen_addr: :443
  public_addr: tele.example.com:443
  acme:
    enabled: "yes"
    email: [email protected]

sudo teleport start

tsh login --proxy=mytenant.teleport.sh
tctl status

The Database Service requires a valid auth token to connect to the cluster. Generate one by running the following command against your Teleport Auth Service and save it in /tmp/token on the node that will run the Database Service:

tctl tokens add --type=db

Install Teleport on the host where you will run the Teleport Database Service:

Download Teleport's PGP public key
sudo curl https://deb.releases.teleport.dev/teleport-pubkey.asc \  -o /usr/share/keyrings/teleport-archive-keyring.asc
Add the Teleport APT repository
echo "deb [signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/teleport-archive-keyring.asc] https://deb.releases.teleport.dev/ stable main" \| sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/teleport.list > /dev/null
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install teleport

sudo yum-config-manager --add-repo https://rpm.releases.teleport.dev/teleport.repo
sudo yum install teleport
Optional:  Using DNF on newer distributions
$ sudo dnf config-manager --add-repo https://rpm.releases.teleport.dev/teleport.repo
$ sudo dnf install teleport

curl https://get.gravitational.com/teleport-v9.3.7-linux-amd64-bin.tar.gz.sha256
<checksum> <filename>
curl -O https://get.gravitational.com/teleport-v9.3.7-linux-amd64-bin.tar.gz
shasum -a 256 teleport-v9.3.7-linux-amd64-bin.tar.gz
Verify that the checksums match
tar -xzf teleport-v9.3.7-linux-amd64-bin.tar.gz
cd teleport
sudo ./install

curl https://get.gravitational.com/teleport-v9.3.7-linux-arm-bin.tar.gz.sha256
<checksum> <filename>
curl -O https://get.gravitational.com/teleport-v9.3.7-linux-arm-bin.tar.gz
shasum -a 256 teleport-v9.3.7-linux-arm-bin.tar.gz
Verify that the checksums match
tar -xzf teleport-v9.3.7-linux-arm-bin.tar.gz
cd teleport
sudo ./install

curl https://get.gravitational.com/teleport-v9.3.7-linux-arm64-bin.tar.gz.sha256
<checksum> <filename>
curl -O https://get.gravitational.com/teleport-v9.3.7-linux-arm64-bin.tar.gz
shasum -a 256 teleport-v9.3.7-linux-arm64-bin.tar.gz
Verify that the checksums match
tar -xzf teleport-v9.3.7-linux-arm64-bin.tar.gz
cd teleport
sudo ./install

Create a user

Create a local Teleport user with the built-in access role:

tctl users add \  --roles=access \  --db-users=\* \  --db-names=\* \  alice

For more detailed information about database access controls and how to restrict access see RBAC documentation.

Step 6/7. Set up the Teleport Database service

Below is an example of a Database Service configuration file that proxies a single Cloud SQL PostgreSQL database:

teleport:
  data_dir: /var/lib/teleport-db
  nodename: test
  # Proxy address to connect to. Note that it has to be the proxy address
  # because the Database Service always connects to the cluster over a reverse
  # tunnel.
  auth_servers:
  - teleport.example.com:3080
db_service:
  enabled: "yes"
  # This section contains definitions of all databases proxied by this
  # service, can contain multiple items.
  databases:
    # Name of the database proxy instance, used to reference in CLI.
  - name: "cloudsql"
    # Free-form description of the database proxy instance.
    description: "GCP Cloud SQL PostgreSQL"
    # Database protocol.
    protocol: "postgres"
    # Database endpoint. For Cloud SQL use instance's public IP address.
    uri: "35.1.2.3:5432"
    # Path to Cloud SQL instance root certificate you downloaded above.
    ca_cert_file: /path/to/cloudsql/instance/root.pem
    # GCP specific configuration when connecting Cloud SQL instance.
    gcp:
      # GCP project ID.
      project_id: "<project-id>"
      # Cloud SQL instance ID.
      instance_id: "test"
    # Labels to assign to the database, used in RBAC.
    static_labels:
      env: dev
auth_service:
  enabled: "no"
ssh_service:
  enabled: "no"
proxy_service:
  enabled: "no"

Start the Database Service:

teleport start --config=/path/to/teleport-db.yaml --token=/tmp/token

GCP credentials

The Teleport Database Service must have credentials of teleport-db-service GCP service account we created above in order to be able to generate IAM auth tokens.

The easiest way to ensure that is to set the GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS environment variable to point to the JSON credentials file you downloaded earlier.

See Authenticating as a service account in the Google Cloud documentation for more details.

Step 7/7. Connect

Once the Database Service has joined the cluster, log in to see the available databases:

tsh login --proxy=teleport.example.com --user=alice
tsh db ls
Name     Description              Labels
-------- ------------------------ --------
cloudsql GCP Cloud SQL PostgreSQL env=dev

Note that you will only be able to see databases your role has access to. See our RBAC guide for more details.

To connect to a particular database server, first retrieve credentials from Teleport using the tsh db login command:

$ tsh db login cloudsql

You can optionally specify the database name and the user to use by default when connecting to the database instance:

tsh db login [email protected]<project-id>.iam --db-name=postgres cloudsql

Once logged in, connect to the database:

tsh db connect aurora

To log out of the database and remove credentials:

Remove credentials for a particular database instance.
tsh db logout cloudsql
Remove credentials for all database instances.
tsh db logout