Teleport

Database Access with AWS RDS and Aurora for PostgreSQL, MySQL and MariaDB

Access to AWS or RDS Aurora databases can be provided by Teleport Database Access. This allows for fine-grain access control through Teleport's RBAC.

This guide demonstrates how to use Teleport to connect to AWS or RDS Aurora databases.

In this guide, you will:

Configure AWS RDS or Aurora databases with IAM authentication.
Join the AWS RDS or Aurora databases to your Teleport cluster.
Connect to the AWS RDS or Aurora database via the Teleport Database Service.

How it works

The Teleport Database Service uses IAM authentication to communicate with RDS. When a user connects to the database via Teleport, the Database Service obtains AWS credentials and authenticates to AWS as an IAM principal with permissions to manage the database.

Supported versions

The following products are not compatible with Teleport as they don't support IAM authentication:

Aurora Serverless v1.
RDS MariaDB versions lower than 10.6.

We recommend upgrading Aurora Serverless v1 to Aurora Serverless v2, which supports IAM authentication.

This guide shows how to enroll a single database through the Teleport Database Service. For a more scalable approach, learn how to configure the Teleport Discovery Service to automatically enroll all AWS databases in your infrastructure.

Prerequisites

A running Teleport cluster version 15.2.4 or above. If you want to get started with Teleport, sign up for a free trial or set up a demo environment.
The tctl admin tool and tsh client tool.

On Teleport Enterprise, you must use the Enterprise version of tctl, which you can download from your Teleport account workspace. Otherwise, visit Installation for instructions on downloading tctl and tsh for Teleport Community Edition.

AWS account with RDS and Aurora databases and permissions to create and attach IAM policies.

IAM authentication
Your RDS and Aurora databases must have password and IAM authentication enabled.
If IAM authentication is not enabled on the target RDS and Aurora databases, the Database Service will attempt to enable IAM authentication by modifying them using respective APIs.
A Linux host or Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service cluster where you will run the Teleport Database Service, which proxies connections to your RDS databases.
To check that you can connect to your Teleport cluster, sign in with tsh login, then verify that you can run tctl commands using your current credentials. tctl is supported on macOS and Linux machines.

For example:
```
tsh login --proxy=teleport.example.com --user=[email protected]
tctl status
Cluster  teleport.example.com
Version  15.2.4
CA pin   sha256:abdc1245efgh5678abdc1245efgh5678abdc1245efgh5678abdc1245efgh5678
```
If you can connect to the cluster and run the tctl status command, you can use your current credentials to run subsequent tctl commands from your workstation. If you host your own Teleport cluster, you can also run tctl commands on the computer that hosts the Teleport Auth Service for full permissions.

If you plan to run the Teleport Database Service on Kubernetes, you will need the following:

The aws CLI in your PATH. Install it by following the AWS documentation.
An IAM OIDC provider running in your Kubernetes cluster. See the AWS documentation for how to create an IAM OIDC provider.

To check whether you have an IAM OIDC provider running in your cluster, run the following aws command, assigning eks-region to the region where your EKS cluster is running and cluster-name to the name of your Kubernetes cluster:
```
aws --region=eks-region eks describe-cluster --name cluster-name --query "cluster.identity.oidc.issuer" --output text
```
If you have an IAM OIDC provider associated with your cluster, this command will print its ID.
The jq CLI tool, which we use to process JSON data in this guide.

Step 1/6. Create a Teleport user

Tip

To modify an existing user to provide access to the Database Service, see Database Access Access Controls

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

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

Create a local Teleport user with the built-in access and requester roles:

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

Flag	Description
`--roles`	List of roles to assign to the user. The builtin `access` role allows them to connect to any database server registered with Teleport.
`--db-users`	List of database usernames the user will be allowed to use when connecting to the databases. A wildcard allows any user.
`--db-names`	List of logical databases (aka schemas) the user will be allowed to connect to within a database server. A wildcard allows any database.

Warning

Database names are only enforced for PostgreSQL and MongoDB databases.

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

Step 2/6. Create a Database Service configuration

In this section, you will configure the Teleport Database Service. To do so, you will:

Create a join token for the service to demonstrate trust with your Teleport cluster.
Set up your package manager so you can install and run the Database Service.
Generate a configuration for the Database Service.

Create a join token

Establish trust between the Teleport Database Service and your Teleport cluster by creating a join token.

Generate a join token by running the following command on your workstation:

tctl tokens add --type=db

The next step depends on how you plan to run the Teleport Database Service:

Save the token in a file called /tmp/token on the host that will run the Database Service.

Later in this guide, you will use this join token when configuring the Teleport Database Service.

For users with a lot of infrastructure in AWS, or who might create or recreate many instances, consider alternative methods for joining new EC2 instances running Teleport:

Prepare your environment

Next, get your environment ready to run the Teleport Database Service:

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

Install Teleport on your Linux server:

Assign edition to one of the following, depending on your Teleport edition:

Edition Value
Teleport Enterprise Cloud cloud
Teleport Enterprise (Self-Hosted) enterprise
Teleport Community Edition oss

Edition	Value
Teleport Enterprise Cloud	`cloud`
Teleport Enterprise (Self-Hosted)	`enterprise`
Teleport Community Edition	`oss`

Get the version of Teleport to install. If you have automatic agent updates enabled in your cluster, query the latest Teleport version that is compatible with the updater:

TELEPORT_DOMAIN=example.teleport.com
TELEPORT_VERSION="$(curl https://$TELEPORT_DOMAIN/v1/webapi/automaticupgrades/channel/default/version | sed 's/v//')"

Otherwise, get the version of your Teleport cluster:

TELEPORT_DOMAIN=example.teleport.com
TELEPORT_VERSION="$(curl https://$TELEPORT_DOMAIN/v1/webapi/ping | jq -r '.server_version')"

Install Teleport on your Linux server:
```
curl https://goteleport.com/static/install.sh | bash -s ${TELEPORT_VERSION} edition
```
The installation script detects the package manager on your Linux server and uses it to install Teleport binaries. To customize your installation, learn about the Teleport package repositories in the installation guide.

Generate a configuration for the Teleport Database Service:

Generate a configuration file for the Teleport Database Service. Run one of the following commands, depending on whether you want to proxy an AWS Aurora or Amazon RDS instance.

Assign example.teleport.sh:443 to the host and port of your Teleport Proxy Service or Enterprise Cloud site. Assign us-west-1 to the region associated with the RDS database.

Run the following command to proxy an AWS Aurora cluster, assigning RDS_URI to your cluster's domain name and port and protocol to either postgres or mysql, depending on the database you want to proxy:

sudo teleport db configure create \   -o file \   --name="postgres-rds" \   --proxy=example.teleport.sh:443  \   --protocol=protocol \   --uri=RDS_URI \   --token=/tmp/token

Run the following command to proxy an AWS RDS instance, assigning RDS_URI to your instance's domain name and port and protocol to either postgres or mysql, depending on the database you want to proxy:

sudo teleport db configure create \   -o file \   --name="postgres-rds" \   --proxy=example.teleport.sh:443  \   --protocol=protocol \   --uri=RDS_URI \   --token=/tmp/token

The command will generate a Teleport Database Service configuration file and place it at the /etc/teleport.yaml location.

Set up the Teleport Helm repository.

Allow Helm to install charts that are hosted in the Teleport Helm repository:

helm repo add teleport https://charts.releases.teleport.dev

Update the cache of charts from the remote repository so you can upgrade to all available releases:

helm repo update

Step 3/6. Create IAM policies for Teleport

The Teleport Database Service needs AWS IAM permissions to be able to configure IAM authentication for RDS instances and Aurora clusters.

In this step, we will show you how to provide the Teleport Database Service access to AWS credentials:

Follow these instructions on your Linux host.

Grant the Database Service access to credentials that it can use to authenticate to AWS. If you are running the Database Service on an EC2 instance, you may use the EC2 Instance Metadata Service method. Otherwise, you must use environment variables:

Teleport will detect when it is running on an EC2 instance and use the Instance Metadata Service to fetch credentials.

The EC2 instance should be configured to use an EC2 instance profile. For more information, see: Using Instance Profiles.

Teleport's built-in AWS client reads credentials from the following environment variables:

AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID
AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY
AWS_DEFAULT_REGION

When you start the Database Service, the service reads environment variables from a file at the path /etc/default/teleport. Obtain these credentials from your organization. Ensure that /etc/default/teleport has the following content, replacing the values of each variable:

AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID=00000000000000000000
AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY=0000000000000000000000000000000000000000
AWS_DEFAULT_REGION=<YOUR_REGION>

Teleport's AWS client loads credentials from different sources in the following order:

Environment Variables
Shared credentials file
Shared configuration file (Teleport always enables shared configuration)
EC2 Instance Metadata (credentials only)

While you can provide AWS credentials via a shared credentials file or shared configuration file, you will need to run the Database Service with the AWS_PROFILE environment variable assigned to the name of your profile of choice.

If you have a specific use case that the instructions above do not account for, consult the documentation for the AWS SDK for Go for a detailed description of credential loading behavior.

Teleport can bootstrap IAM permissions for the Database Service based on its configuration using the teleport db configure bootstrap command. You can use this command in automatic or manual mode:

In automatic mode, Teleport will attempt to create appropriate IAM policies and attach them to the specified IAM identity (user or role). This requires IAM permissions to create and attach IAM policies.
In manual mode, Teleport will print required IAM policies. You can then create and attach them manually using the AWS management console.

Use this command to bootstrap the permissions automatically when your Teleport Database Service runs as an IAM user (for example, uses an AWS credentials file).

teleport db configure bootstrap -c /etc/teleport.yaml --attach-to-user TeleportUser

Use this command to bootstrap the permissions automatically when your Teleport Database Service runs as an IAM role (for example, on an EC2 instance with an attached IAM role).

teleport db configure bootstrap -c /etc/teleport.yaml --attach-to-role TeleportRole

Use this command to display required IAM policies which you will then create in your AWS console:

teleport db configure bootstrap -c /etc/teleport.yaml --manual --attach-to-user arn:aws:iam::123456789012:user/TeleportUser

Use this command to display required IAM policies which you will then create in your AWS console:

teleport db configure bootstrap -c /etc/teleport.yaml --manual --attach-to-role arn:aws:iam::123456789012:role/TeleportRole

When assume_role_arn is configured for databases or AWS matchers, teleport db configure bootstrap will determine permissions required for the bootstrap target AWS IAM identity using the following logic:

When the target does not match assume_role_arn in any database resource or AWS matcher in the configuration file, the target is assumed to be the Teleport Database Service's AWS IAM identity and permissions are bootstrapped for all the configured static databases and AWS matchers.
When an --attach-to-role target matches an assume_role_arn setting for static databases or AWS matchers in the configuration file, permissions will be bootstrapped only for those static databases or AWS matchers.

You will need to run the bootstrap command once with the Teleport Database Service's IAM identity as the policy attachment target, and once for each AWS IAM role that is used for assume_role_arn.

Note

Teleport uses rds:ModifyDBInstance and rds:ModifyDBCluster to automatically enable IAM authentication on the RDS instance and the Aurora cluster, respectively. You can omit these permissions if IAM authentication is already enabled.

Follow these instructions on your local workstation.

Create an IAM policy document that allows an IAM identity to connect to your RDS database. Assign rds-region to the name of the AWS region where your RDS database is running, aws-account to your AWS account number, and resource-id to the resource ID of your RDS database or the cluster ID of your Aurora cluster (e.g., db-AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA):

cat > connect.json << EOF{   "Version": "2012-10-17",   "Statement": [      {         "Effect": "Allow",         "Action": [             "rds-db:connect"         ],         "Resource": [             "arn:aws:rds-db:rds-region:aws-account:dbuser:resource-id/*"         ]      }   ]}EOF

Create the IAM policy:

aws iam create-policy --policy-name teleport-rds-policy --policy-document file://connect.json
{    "Policy": {        "PolicyName": "teleport-rds-policy",        "PolicyId": "000000000000000000000",        "Arn": "arn:aws:iam::000000000000:policy/teleport-rds-policy",        "Path": "/",        "DefaultVersionId": "v1",        "AttachmentCount": 0,        "PermissionsBoundaryUsageCount": 0,        "IsAttachable": true,        "CreateDate": "2023-07-13T18:03:08+00:00",        "UpdateDate": "2023-07-13T18:03:08+00:00"    }}

Next, create a trust policy for the teleport-rds-role, which allows the role to obtain temporary credentials via the IAM OIDC provider.

Retrieve your OIDC issuer ID, assigning cluster-name to the name of your EKS cluster and eks-region to the AWS region where your EKS cluster is running:

aws eks describe-cluster --name cluster-name --region eks-region | jq -r .cluster.identity.oidc.issuer | grep -Eo "[A-Z0-9]+$"
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

Create a file called trustpolicy.json with the following content, assigning oidc-issuer to the issuer string you retrieved:

{    "Version": "2012-10-17",    "Statement": [        {            "Effect": "Allow",            "Principal": {                "Federated": "arn:aws:iam::aws-account:oidc-provider/oidc.eks.eks-region.amazonaws.com/id/oidc-issuer"            },            "Action": "sts:AssumeRoleWithWebIdentity",            "Condition": {                "StringEquals": {                    "oidc.eks.eks-region.amazonaws.com/id/oidc-issuer:aud": "sts.amazonaws.com"                }            }        }    ]}

Create an IAM role with your trust policy. On success, the command will show the IAM resource you created:

aws iam create-role --role-name teleport-rds-role --assume-role-policy-document file://trustpolicy.json

Attach the role to the policy you created earlier. On success, this command will show no output:

aws iam attach-role-policy --policy-arn arn:aws:iam::aws-account:policy/teleport-rds-policy --role-name teleport-rds-role

Step 4/6. Start the Database Service

Start the Teleport Database Service in your environment:

Configure the Database Service to start automatically when the host boots up by creating a systemd service for it. The instructions depend on how you installed the Database Service.

On the host where you will run the Database Service, enable and start Teleport:

sudo systemctl enable teleport
sudo systemctl start teleport

On the host where you will run the Database Service, create a systemd service configuration for Teleport, enable the Teleport service, and start Teleport:

sudo teleport install systemd -o /etc/systemd/system/teleport.service
sudo systemctl enable teleport
sudo systemctl start teleport

You can check the status of the Database Service with systemctl status teleport and view its logs with journalctl -fu teleport.

Retrieve the join token you created earlier in this guide by running the following command and copying a token with the Db type:

tctl tokens ls
Token                            Type Labels Expiry Time (UTC)-------------------------------- ---- ------ ----------------------------abcd123-insecure-do-not-use-this Db          14 Jun 23 21:21 UTC (20m15s)

Create a Helm values file called values.yaml, assigning token to the value of the join token you retrieved above, example.teleport.sh:443 to the host and port of your Teleport Proxy Service, and rds-uri to the host and port of your RDS database (e.g., myrds.us-east-1.rds.amazonaws.com:5432):

authToken: tokenproxyAddr: example.teleport.sh:443roles: dbdatabases:- name: example  uri: "rds-uri"  protocol: protocol  static_labels:    env: dev  aws:    region: "rds-region"annotations:  serviceAccount:    eks.amazonaws.com/role-arn: arn:aws:iam::aws-account:role/teleport-rds-role

Install the Helm chart for Teleport agent services, teleport-kube-agent:

helm -n teleport-agent install teleport-kube-agent teleport/teleport-kube-agent \  --values values.yaml --create-namespace

Make sure that the Teleport agent pod is running. You should see one teleport-kube-agent pod with a single ready container:

kubectl -n teleport-agent get pods
NAME                    READY   STATUS    RESTARTS   AGEteleport-kube-agent-0   1/1     Running   0          32s

Step 5/6. Create a database IAM user

Database users must allow IAM authentication in order to be used with Database Access for RDS. See below how to enable it for the user alice on your database engine. In the next step, we will authenticate to the database as the alice user via the user's Teleport account.

PostgreSQL users must have a rds_iam role:

CREATE USER alice;
GRANT rds_iam TO alice;

MySQL and MariaDB users must have the RDS authentication plugin enabled:

CREATE USER alice IDENTIFIED WITH AWSAuthenticationPlugin AS 'RDS';

Created user may not have access to anything by default so let's grant it some permissions:

GRANT ALL ON `%`.* TO 'alice'@'%';

See Creating a database account using IAM authentication for more information.

Step 6/6. Connect

Once the Database Service has started and joined the cluster, log in as the alice user you created earlier to see the registered databases:

tsh login --proxy=example.teleport.sh:443 --user=alice
tsh db ls
Name         Description Labels
------------ ----------- --------
postgres-rds

Retrieve credentials for a database and connect to it as the alice user, assigning postgres-rds to the name of a database resource listed by tsh db ls:

tsh db connect postgres-rds --db-user=alice

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

tsh db connect --db-user=postgres --db-name=postgres postgres-rds

Note

The appropriate database command-line client (psql, mysql, mariadb) should be available in PATH in order to be able to connect.

Log out of the database and remove credentials:

tsh db logout postgres-rds

Troubleshooting

Certificate error

If your tsh db connect error includes the following text, you likely have an RDS database created before July 28, 2020, which presents an X.509 certificate that is incompatible with Teleport:

x509: certificate relies on legacy Common Name field, use SANs instead

AWS provides instructions to rotate your SSL/TLS certificate.

No credential providers error

If you see the error NoCredentialProviders: no valid providers in chain in Database Service logs then Teleport is not detecting the required credentials to connect via AWS IAM permissions. Check whether the credentials or security role has been applied in the machine running the Teleport Database Service.

When running on EKS, this error may occur if the Teleport Database Service cannot access IMDSv2 when the PUT requests hop limit on the worker node instance is set to 1. You can use the following commands to check the hop limit:

aws ec2 describe-instances --instance-ids <node-instance-id> | grep HttpPutResponseHopLimit
                        "HttpPutResponseHopLimit": 1,

See IMDSv2 support for EKS and EKS best practices for more details.

Timeout errors

The Teleport Database Service needs connectivity to your database endpoints. That may require enabling inbound traffic on the database from the Database Service on the same VPC or routing rules from another VPC. Using the nc program you can verify connections to databases:

nc -zv postgres-instance-1.sadas.us-east-1.rds.amazonaws.com 5432
Connection to postgres-instance-1.sadas.us-east-1.rds.amazonaws.com (172.31.24.172) 5432 port [tcp/postgresql] succeeded!

Not authorized to perform `sts:AssumeRole`

The Database Service assumes an IAM role in one of following situations:

An IAM role is used as db_user when accessing AWS services that require IAM roles as database users, such as DynamoDB, Keyspaces, Opensearch, and Redshift Serverless.
The assume_role_arn field is specified for the database resources or dynamic resource matchers.

When both of the above conditions are true for a database connection, the Database Service performs a role chaining by assuming the IAM role specified assume_role_arn first then using that IAM role to assume the IAM role for db_user.

You may encounter the following error if the trust relationship is not configured properly between the IAM roles:

AccessDenied: User: arn:aws:sts::111111111111:assumed-role/database-service-role/i-* is not authorized to perform: sts:AssumeRole on resource: arn:aws:iam::111111111111:role/database-user-role

To allow IAM Role role1 to assume IAM Role role2, the following is generally required:

role1 or its AWS account should be set as Principal in role2's trust policy.

{
  "Version": "2012-10-17",
  "Statement": [
    {
      "Effect": "Allow",
      "Principal": {
        "AWS": "arn:aws:iam::111111111111:role/role1"
      },
      "Action": "sts:AssumeRole"
    }
  ]
}

{
  "Version": "2012-10-17",
  "Statement": [
    {
      "Effect": "Allow",
      "Principal": {
        "AWS": "arn:aws:iam::111111111111:root"
      },
      "Action": "sts:AssumeRole"
    }
  ]
}

{
  "Version": "2012-10-17",
  "Statement": [
    {
      "Effect": "Allow",
      "Principal": {
        "AWS": "arn:aws:iam::123456789012:role/role1"
      },
      "Action": "sts:AssumeRole",
      "Condition": {
        "StringEquals": {
          "sts:ExternalId": "example-external-id"
        }
      }
    }
  ]
}

role1 requires sts:AssumeRole permissions, for example:

{
    "Version": "2012-10-17",
    "Statement": [
        {
            "Action": "sts:AssumeRole",
            "Effect": "Allow",
            "Resource": "arn:aws:iam::111111111111:role/role2"
        }
    ]
}

Note that this policy can be omitted when role1 and role2 are in the same AWS account and role1's full ARN is configured as Principal in role2's trust policy.

role1 also requires sts:AssumeRole permissions in its boundary policy, for example:

{
    "Version": "2012-10-17",
    "Statement": [
        {
            "Action": "sts:AssumeRole",
            "Effect": "Allow",
            "Resource": "*"
        }
    ]
}

Note that this is only required when a boundary policy is attached to role1.

You can test the trust relationship by running this AWS CLI command as role1:

aws sts assume-role --role-arn arn:aws:iam::111111111111:role/role2 --role-session-name test-trust-relationship

Learn more on how to use trust policies with IAM roles.

Maximum policy size exceeded errors

Due to IAM and STS character limits, you may encounter one of the following errors in the Database Service logs when large numbers of databases are registered:

LimitExceeded: Maximum policy size of 2048 bytes exceeded for user <iam-user>
LimitExceeded: Maximum policy size of 10240 bytes exceeded for role <iam-role>

For reference, a user policy can maintain permissions for approximately 6 Redshift databases, or 20 RDS databases due to the IAM policy character limits. A role policy can maintain permissions for approximately 30 Redshift databases, or 100 RDS databases.

To get around this limit, try using one or a combination of the following methods:

You can reduce the policy size by separating them into multiple IAM roles. Use assume_role_arn to specify different IAM roles for accessing the databases:

You can specify assume_role_arn in the AWS matchers of Discovery Service's configuration:

discovery_service:
  enabled: "yes"
  aws:
    - types: ["rds"]
      regions: ["us-west-1", "us-west-2"]
      assume_role_arn: "arn:aws:iam::123456789012:role/example-role-rds-env-prod-discovery"
      tags:
        "env": "prod"

    - types: ["redshift", "redshift-serverless"]
      regions: ["us-west-2"]
      assume_role_arn: "arn:aws:iam::123456789012:role/example-role-redshift-env-dev"
      tags:
        "env": "dev"

The Discovery Service will use the IAM roles specified in assume_role_arn for discovery, and by default the Database Service will use the same IAM roles for authentication.

However, you can also overwrite the IAM roles for authentication by Database Service if you wish to use different roles:

db_service:
  enabled: "yes"
  resources:
    # Matches us-west-1 env=prod RDS databases from Discovery Service, and
    # overwrites assume_role_arn.
    - labels:
        "env": "prod"
        "region": "us-west-1"
      aws:
        assume_role_arn: "arn:aws:iam::123456789012:role/example-role-rds-env-prod-us-west-1-access"

    # Matches us-west-2 env=prod RDS databases from Discovery Service, and
    # overwrites assume_role_arn.
    - labels:
        "env": "prod"
        "region": "us-west-2"
      aws:
        assume_role_arn: "arn:aws:iam::123456789012:role/example-role-rds-env-prod-us-west-2-access"

    # Matches env=dev Redshift databases from Discovery Service and inherits
    # "arn:aws:iam::123456789012:role/example-role-redshift-env-dev"
    - labels:
        "env": "dev"

Auto-discovery labels

Teleport generates certain labels derived from the cloud resource attributes during discovery. See Auto-Discovery labels /labels/#auto-discovery) for more details.

Create or print the required IAM policies with the following commands and attach them to the respective IAM roles:

teleport db configure aws create-iam --types redshift,redshift-serverless --name teleport-redshift-access
teleport db configure aws print-iam --types redshift,redshift-serverless

Refer to the command usage for a complete list of database types supported by the --types option.

You can specify assume_role_arn in the AWS matchers of Database Service's configuration:

db_service:
  enabled: "yes"
  aws:
    - types: ["rds"]
      regions: ["us-west-1", "us-west-2"]
      assume_role_arn: "arn:aws:iam::123456789012:role/example-role-rds-env-prod"
      tags:
        "env": "prod"

    - types: ["redshift", "redshift-serverless"]
      regions: ["us-west-2"]
      assume_role_arn: "arn:aws:iam::123456789012:role/example-role-redshift-env-dev"
      tags:
        "env": "dev"

The Database Service will use the IAM roles specified assume_role_arn for both discovery and authentication.

To bootstrap IAM permissions, run the bootstrap command for each assume_role_arn:

teleport db configure bootstrap \    -c /etc/teleport.yaml \    --policy-name teleport-policy-rds-env-prod \    --attach-to-role "arn:aws:iam::123456789012:role/example-role-rds-env-prod"

You can specify aws.assume_role_arn when defining databases in Database Service's configuration:

db_service:
  enabled: "yes"
  databases:
  - name: "rds-postgres"
    protocol: "postgres"
    uri: "rds-postgres.abcdef012345.us-west-1.rds.amazonaws.com:5432"
    aws:
        assume_role_arn: "arn:aws:iam::123456789012:role/example-rds-access-role"

To bootstrap IAM permissions, run the bootstrap command for each assume_role_arn:

teleport db configure bootstrap \    -c /etc/teleport.yaml \    --policy-name teleport-policy-rds-access \    --attach-to-role "arn:aws:iam::123456789012:role/example-rds-access-role"

You can specify aws.assume_role_arn when defining databases:

kind: db
version: v3
metadata:
  name: "rds-postgres"
  labels:
    env: "dev"
spec:
  protocol: "postgres"
  uri: "rds-postgres.abcdef012345.us-west-1.rds.amazonaws.com:5432"
  aws:
    assume_role_arn: "arn:aws:iam::123456789012:role/example-rds-access-role"

Alternatively, you can overwrite the IAM roles for authentication by Database Service:

db_service:
  enabled: "yes"
  resources:
    # Matches env=dev databases and overwrites assume_role_arn.
    - labels:
        "env": "dev"
      aws:
        assume_role_arn: "arn:aws:iam::123456789012:role/example-env-dev-access"

    # Matches env=prod database, and use the assume_role_arn in the database's
    # definition or use the host IAM identity if assume_role_arn is empty.
    - labels:
        "env": "prod"

Create or print the required IAM policies with the following commands and attach them to the respective IAM roles:

teleport db configure aws create-iam --types rds --name teleport-rds-access
teleport db configure aws print-iam --types rds

Refer to the command usage for a complete list of database types supported by the --types option.

The IAM roles specified in assume_role_arn must trust the IAM identity of the host running the Database Service.

The assume_role_arn is not limited to the same AWS account so you can also use this feature for AWS Cross-Account Access.

You can manually manage IAM policies for database connections instead of relying on the Database Service to update them.

For example, you can limit the character size by attaching a policy with a wildcard "*" for "Resource":

{
    "Version": "2012-10-17",
    "Statement": [
        {
            "Effect": "Allow",
            "Action": "rds-db:connect",
            "Resource": "*"
        }
    ]
}

{
    "Version": "2012-10-17",
    "Statement": [
        {
            "Effect": "Allow",
            "Action": "redshift:GetClusterCredentials",
            "Resource": "*"
        }
    ]
}

You can safely remove the inline policy created by the Database Service and the IAM permissions for the Database Service to Get/Put/Delete the user or role policy.

You can deploy the Database Service in a highly available (HA) configuration where databases can be sharded to separate Database Services with different IAM roles.

IAM users have a lower character limit compared to IAM roles. If the limit is exceeded for a user policy, it is recommended to use IAM roles for the Database Service instead.

Unable to cancel a query

If you use a PostgreSQL cli client like psql, and you try to cancel a query with ctrl+c, but it doesn't cancel the query, then you need to connect using a tsh local proxy instead. When psql cancels a query, it establishes a new connection without TLS certificates, however Teleport requires TLS certificates not only for authentication, but also to route database connections.

If you enable TLS Routing in Teleport then tsh db connect will automatically start a local proxy for every connection. Alternatively, you can connect via Teleport Connect which also uses a local proxy. Otherwise, you need to start a tsh local proxy manually using tsh proxy db and connect via the local proxy.

If you have already started a long-running query in a psql session that you cannot cancel with ctrl+c, you can start a new client session to cancel that query manually:

First, find the query's process identifier (PID):

SELECT pid,usename,backend_start,query FROM pg_stat_activity WHERE state = 'active';

Next, gracefully cancel the query using its PID. This will send a SIGINT signal to the postgres backend process for that query:

SELECT pg_cancel_backend(<PID>);

You should always try to gracefully terminate a query first, but if graceful cancellation is taking too long, then you can forcefully terminate the query instead. This will send a SIGTERM signal to the postgres backend process for that query:

SELECT pg_terminate_backend(<PID>);

See the PostgreSQL documentation on admin functions for more information about the pg_cancel_backend and pg_terminate_backend functions.

SSL SYSCALL error

You may encounter the following error when your local psql is not compatible with newer versions of OpenSSL:

tsh db connect --db-user postgres --db-name postgres postgres
psql: error: connection to server at "localhost" (::1), port 12345 failed: Connection refused    Is the server running on that host and accepting TCP/IP connections?connection to server at "localhost" (127.0.0.1), port 12345 failed: SSL SYSCALL error: Undefined error: 0

Please upgrade your local psql to the latest version.

Next steps

Learn how to restrict access to certain users and databases.

View the High Availability (HA) guide.

Take a look at the YAML configuration reference.

See the full CLI reference.

Set up automatic database user provisioning.

The Teleport Access Platform

Featured Resource

Integrations

Featured Resource

Use Cases

Featured Resource

Industries

Featured Resource

Compliance

Featured Webinar

Strategic Partners

Featured AWS Webinar

Read

Experience

Discover

Featured Blog Post

Company

Explore

Featured Webinar

Database Access with AWS RDS and Aurora for PostgreSQL, MySQL and MariaDB

How it works

Prerequisites

Step 1/6. Create a Teleport user

Step 2/6. Create a Database Service configuration

Create a join token

Prepare your environment

Step 3/6. Create IAM policies for Teleport

Step 4/6. Start the Database Service

Step 5/6. Create a database IAM user

Step 6/6. Connect

Troubleshooting

Certificate error

No credential providers error

Timeout errors

Not authorized to perform `sts:AssumeRole`

Maximum policy size exceeded errors

Unable to cancel a query

SSL SYSCALL error

Next steps

The Teleport Access Platform

Featured Resource

Integrations

Featured Resource

Use Cases

Featured Resource

Industries

Featured Resource

Compliance

Featured Webinar

Strategic Partners

Featured AWS Webinar

Featured Blog Post

Featured Webinar

Database Access with AWS RDS and Aurora for PostgreSQL, MySQL and MariaDB

How it works

Prerequisites

Step 1/6. Create a Teleport user

Step 2/6. Create a Database Service configuration

Create a join token

Prepare your environment

Step 3/6. Create IAM policies for Teleport

Step 4/6. Start the Database Service

Step 5/6. Create a database IAM user

Step 6/6. Connect

Troubleshooting

Certificate error

No credential providers error

Timeout errors

Not authorized to perform sts:AssumeRole

Maximum policy size exceeded errors

Unable to cancel a query

SSL SYSCALL error

Next steps

Not authorized to perform `sts:AssumeRole`