Database Access with Redis

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

Teleport can provide secure access to Redis via the Teleport Database Service. This allows for fine-grained access control through Teleport's RBAC.

In this guide, you will:

1. Configure an Redis database.
2. Join the Redis database to your Teleport cluster.
3. Connect to the Redis database via the Teleport Database Service.

How it works

The Teleport Database Service authenticates to your self-hosted Redis database using mutual TLS. Redis trusts the Teleport certificate authority for database clients, and presents a certificate signed by either the Teleport database CA or a custom CA. When a user initiates a database session, the Database Service presents a certificate signed by Teleport. The authenticated connection then proxies client traffic from the user.

• Self-Hosted
• Teleport Cloud

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.

• Redis version 6.0 or newer.

  Note

  RESP3 (REdis Serialization Protocol) is currently not supported.

• redis-cli version 6.2 or newer installed and added to your system's PATH environment variable.

• A host where you will run the Teleport Database Service.

  See Installation for details.

• 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.

Step 1/5. Set up the Teleport Database Service

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 and configure Teleport where you will run the Teleport Database Service:

sudo teleport db configure create \   -o file \   --token=/tmp/token \   --proxy=teleport.example.com:443 \   --name=example-redis \   --protocol=redis \   --uri=rediss://redis.example.com:6379 \   --labels=env=dev 

sudo teleport db configure create \   -o file \   --token=/tmp/token \   --proxy=mytenant.teleport.sh:443 \   --name=example-redis \   --protocol=redis \   --uri=rediss://redis.example.com:6379 \   --labels=env=dev

sudo systemctl enable teleport
sudo systemctl start teleport

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

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

helm repo update

JOIN_TOKEN=$(cat /tmp/token)
helm install teleport-kube-agent teleport/teleport-kube-agent \  --create-namespace \  --namespace teleport-agent \  --set roles=db \  --set proxyAddr=teleport.example.com:443 \  --set authToken=${JOIN_TOKEN?} \  --set "databases[0].name=example-redis" \  --set "databases[0].uri=rediss://redis.example.com:6379" \  --set "databases[0].protocol=redis" \  --set "labels.env=dev" \  --version 15.2.4

JOIN_TOKEN=$(cat /tmp/token)
helm install teleport-kube-agent teleport/teleport-kube-agent \  --create-namespace \  --namespace teleport-agent \  --set roles=db \  --set proxyAddr=mytenant.teleport.sh:443 \  --set authToken=${JOIN_TOKEN?} \  --set "databases[0].name=example-redis" \  --set "databases[0].uri=rediss://redis.example.com:6379" \  --set "databases[0].protocol=redis" \  --set "labels.env=dev" \  --version 15.2.2

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

Step 2/5. Create a Teleport user

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

tctl users add \  --roles=access,requester \  --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.

If you are using Teleport Cloud, your Teleport user must be allowed to impersonate the system role Db in order to be able to generate the database certificate.

Include the following allow rule in in your Teleport Cloud user's role:

allow:
  impersonate:
    users: ["Db"]
    roles: ["Db"]

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:

tsh db connect example-redis

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

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

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

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.