Database Access with Redis

If you want to configure Redis Cluster, please read Database Access with Redis Cluster.

This guide will help you to:

• Install and configure Teleport.
• Configure mutual TLS authentication between Teleport and Redis.
• Connect to Redis through Teleport.

Prerequisites

• Teleport version 9.0 or newer.
• Redis version 6.0 or newer.
• redis-cli installed and added to your system's PATH environment variable.

Step 1/5. Set up Teleport Auth and Proxy

teleport configure --acme [email protected].com --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

Step 2/5. Create a Teleport 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 3/5. Create Redis users

Each Redis user must be protected by a strong password. We recommend using OpenSSL to generate passwords:

openssl rand -hex 32

ACL GENPASS

Create a users.acl file, which defines users for your Redis deployment, passwords required to log in as a given user, and sets of ACL rules. Redis allows you to provide passwords in plaintext or an SHA256 hash. We strongly recommend using an SHA256 hash instead of plaintext passwords.

You can use the command below to generate an SHA256 hash from a password.

echo -n STRONG_GENERATED_PASSWORD | sha256sum

user alice on #57639ed88a85996453555f22f5aa4147b4c9614056585d931e5d976f610651e9 allcommands allkeys
user default off

For more ACL examples refer to the Redis documentation.

Step 4/5. Set up mutual TLS

Teleport uses mutual TLS authentication with self-hosted databases. These databases must be configured with Teleport's certificate authority to be able to verify client certificates. They also need a certificate/key pair that Teleport can verify.

We will show you how to use tctl auth sign below.

When connecting to standalone Redis, sign the certificate for the hostname over which Teleport will be connecting to it.

For example, if your Redis server is accessible at redis.example.com, run:

tctl auth sign --format=redis --host=redis.example.com --out=server --ttl=2190h

The command will create three files:

• server.cas with Teleport's certificate authority
• server.key with a generated private key
• server.crt with a generated user certificate

You will need these files to enable mutual TLS on your Redis server.

Use the generated secrets to enable mutual TLS in your redis.conf configuration file and restart the database:

tls-port 6379
port 0
aclfile /path/to/users.acl
tls-ca-cert-file /path/to/server.cas
tls-cert-file /path/to/server.crt
tls-key-file /path/to/server.key
tls-protocols "TLSv1.2 TLSv1.3"

Once mutual TLS has been enabled, you will no longer be able to connect to the cluster without providing a valid client certificate. You can use the tls-auth-clients optional setting to allow connections from clients that do not present a certificate.

See TLS Support in the Redis documentation for more details.

Step 5/5. Connect

Log into your Teleport cluster and see available databases:

tsh login --proxy=teleport.example.com --user=alice
tsh db ls
Name          Description     Labels
------------- --------------- --------
example-redis Example Redis   env=dev

tsh login --proxy=mytenant.teleport.sh --user=alice
tsh db ls
Name          Description     Labels
------------- --------------- --------
example-redis Example Redis   env=dev

To connect to a particular database instance, first retrieve its certificate using the tsh db login command:

tsh db login example-redis

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

tsh db login --db-user=alice example-redis

If flag --db-user is not provided, Teleport logs in as the default user.

Once logged in, connect to the database:

tsh db connect example-redis

The redis-cli command-line client should be available in the system PATH in order to be able to connect.

Now you can log in as the previously created user using the below command:

AUTH alice STRONG_GENERATED_PASSWORD

To log out of the database and remove credentials:

Remove credentials for a particular database instance.
tsh db logout example-redis
Remove credentials for all database instances.
tsh db logout

Supported Redis commands

Redis in standalone mode doesn't support the commands below. If one of the listed commands is called Teleport returns the ERR Teleport: not supported by Teleport error.

• HELLO
• PUNSUBSCRIBE
• SSUBSCRIBE
• SUNSUBSCRIBE

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.