Get started with Teleport on DigitalOcean Kubernetes

This guide will show you how to get started with Teleport on DigitalOcean Kubernetes.

If you are already running Teleport on another platform, you can use your existing Teleport deployment to access your Kubernetes cluster. Follow our guide to connect your Kubernetes cluster to Teleport.

Prerequisites

• DigitalOcean account.
• Your workstation configured with kubectl, Helm, doctl, and the Teleport tsh client.

Step 1/4. Create a DigitalOcean Kubernetes cluster

Create a new DigitalOcean Kubernetes Cluster

While the Kubernetes cluster is being provisioned, follow the "Getting Started" guide as shown below:

Step 2/4. Install Teleport

To allow Helm to install charts that are hosted in the Teleport Helm repository, use helm repo add:

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

To update the cache of charts from the remote repository, run helm repo update:

helm repo update

Install Teleport in your Kubernetes cluster using the teleport-cluster Helm chart:

• Teleport Community Edition
• Teleport Enterprise

CLUSTERNAME=tele.example.com # replace with your preferred domain name
[email protected] # replace with your email
helm install teleport-cluster teleport/teleport-cluster \  --create-namespace \  --namespace=teleport-cluster \  --set clusterName=$CLUSTERNAME \  --set acme=true \  --set acmeEmail=$EMAIL_ADDR \  --version 13.0.3
NAME: teleport-cluster
LAST DEPLOYED: Tue Oct 26 17:01:21 2021
NAMESPACE: teleport-cluster
STATUS: deployed
REVISION: 1
TEST SUITE: None

Create a namespace for your Teleport cluster resources and configure the PodSecurityAdmission:

kubectl create namespace teleport-cluster
namespace/teleport-cluster created
kubectl label namespace teleport-cluster 'pod-security.kubernetes.io/enforce=baseline'
namespace/teleport-cluster labeled

The Teleport Auth Service reads a license file to authenticate your Teleport Enterprise account.

To obtain your license file, navigate to your Teleport account and enter your account name (e.g., my-license). After logging in, click the "DOWNLOAD LICENSE KEY" button to download your license file.

kubectl -n teleport-cluster create secret generic license --from-file=license.pem

Install Teleport:

CLUSTERNAME=tele.example.com # replace with your preferred domain name
[email protected] # replace with your email
helm install teleport-cluster teleport/teleport-cluster \  --namespace=teleport-cluster \  --set clusterName=$CLUSTERNAME \  --set acme=true \  --set acmeEmail=$EMAIL_ADDR \  --set enterprise=true \  --version 13.0.3
NAME: teleport-cluster
LAST DEPLOYED: Tue Oct 26 17:01:21 2021
NAMESPACE: teleport-cluster
STATUS: deployed
REVISION: 1
TEST SUITE: None

Update DNS for clusterName

First, get the external IP (from the EXTERNAL-IP field) for the Kubernetes cluster.

kubectl --namespace=teleport-cluster get services
NAME                    TYPE           CLUSTER-IP      EXTERNAL-IP       PORT(S)          AGE
teleport-cluster        LoadBalancer   10.245.163.12   192.168.200.200   443:31959/TCP,3023:30525/TCP,3026:30079/TCP,3024:32437/TCP   19m
teleport-cluster-auth   ClusterIP      10.245.164.28   <none>            3025/TCP,3026/TCP                                            19m

Once you get the value for the external IP (it may take a few minutes for this field to be populated), update your DNS record such that the clusterName's A record points to this IP address. For example 192.168.200.200 is the external IP in the above case.

Step 3/4. Create and set up Teleport user

Now we create a Teleport user by executing the tctl command with kubectl.

kubectl --namespace teleport-cluster exec deployment/teleport-cluster-auth -- tctl users add tadmin --roles=access,editor --logins=ubuntu
User "tadmin" has been created but requires a password. Share this URL with the user to complete user setup, link is valid for 1h:
https://tele.example.com:443/web/invite/<invite-token>
NOTE: Make sure tele.example.com:443 points at a Teleport proxy which users can access.

Copy the link shown after executing the above command and open the link in a web browser to complete the user registration process (the link is https://tele.example.com:443/web/invite/<invite-token> in the above case).

After you complete the registration process by setting up a password and enrolling in two-factor authentication, you will be logged in to Teleport Web UI.

In this step, we created a user tadmin with roles access, edit. These are the default roles available in Teleport. However, to allow this user to access the Kubernetes cluster, we will need to assign tadmin a role authorized to access the Kubernetes cluster. So first, let's create a role named member with the Kubernetes privilege system:master.

Create a new Kubernetes Role named "member"

Create a file named member.yaml with the following spec:

kind: role
version: v4
metadata:
  name: member
spec:
  allow:
    kubernetes_groups: ["system:masters"]

Next, create this role in Kubernetes with the command:

kubectl --namespace=teleport-cluster exec -i deployment/teleport-cluster-auth -- tctl create -f < member.yaml

Assign the "member" role to user "tadmin"

Now we will assign Teleport user tadmin with this role. The example below shows a process using Teleport Web UI: First, lets select user edit menu:

Second, update the tadmin user role to assign the member role:

We've updated the user tadmin to have the member role, which is allowed to access a Kubernetes cluster with privilege system:master.

Step 4/4. Access your Kubernetes cluster using Teleport

The following steps show how to access the Kubernetes cluster using tsh.

Log in to Teleport

First, authenticate to Teleport using tsh as the tadmin user we created in the third step.

export KUBECONFIG=${HOME?}/teleport-kubeconfig.yaml

tsh login --proxy=tele.example.com:443 --auth=local --user=tadmin
Enter password for Teleport user tadmin:
Enter your OTP token:
540255
> Profile URL:        https://tele.example.com:443
  Logged in as:       tadmin
  Cluster:            tele.example.com
  Roles:              access, editor, member
  Logins:             ubuntu
  Kubernetes:         enabled
  Valid until:        2021-10-27 06:37:15 +0000 UTC [valid for 12h0m0s]
  Extensions:         permit-agent-forwarding, permit-port-forwarding, permit-pty

Select the Kubernetes cluster

tsh kube login tele.example.com
Logged into kubernetes cluster "tele.example.com". Try 'kubectl version' to test the connection.

Connect to the Kubernetes cluster

kubectl --namespace=teleport-cluster get pods
NAME                                READY   STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
teleport-cluster-6cc679b6f6-7xr5h   1/1     Running   0          14h

Voila! User tadmin was able to list the pods in their DigitalOcean Kubernetes cluster.

Teleport keeps an audit log of access to a Kubernetes cluster. In the screenshot below, the Teleport audit log shows that the user tadmin has logged into the cluster.

Next steps

To see all of the options you can set in the values file for the teleport-cluster Helm chart, consult our reference guide.

Read our guides to additional ways you can protect a Kubernetes cluster with Teleport:

• Connect another Kubernetes cluster to Teleport by deploying the Teleport Kubernetes Service
• Set up Machine ID with Kubernetes
• Federated Access using Trusted Clusters
• Single-Sign On and Kubernetes Access Control