Database Access with Azure Cache for Redis

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

In this guide, you will:

1. Configure your Azure Cache for Redis database with Microsoft Entra ID-based authentication.
2. Add the database to your Teleport cluster.
3. Connect to the database via Teleport.

How it works

The Teleport Database Service proxies traffic between Teleport users and Azure Cache for Redis. When a user connects to the database via Teleport, the Database Service obtains an access token from Microsoft Entra ID (formerly Azure AD) and authenticates to Azure as a principal with permissions to manage the database.

• Self-Hosted
• Teleport Enterprise Cloud

Prerequisites

• A running Teleport cluster version 16.4.12 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.

  Visit Installation for instructions on downloading tctl and tsh.

• Deployed Azure Redis server or Azure Redis Enterprise cluster.
• Azure administrative privileges to manage service principals and access controls.
• A host, e.g., an Azure VM instance, where you will run the Teleport Database Service.
• redis-cli version 6.2 or newer installed and added to your system's PATH environment variable.
• 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. For example:

  tsh login --proxy=teleport.example.com --user=[email protected]
  tctl status
  Cluster  teleport.example.com
  Version  16.4.12
  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. 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 2/5. Create a Database Service configuration

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

Install Teleport on your Linux server:

1. 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

2. 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')"

3. Install Teleport on your Linux server:

   curl https://cdn.teleport.dev/install-v16.4.12.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.

Create the Database Service configuration, specifying a region like this:

sudo teleport db configure create \  -o file \  --proxy=tele.example.com:443 \  --token=/tmp/token \  --azure-redis-discovery=eastus

sudo teleport db configure create \  -o file \  --proxy=teleport.example.com:3080 \  --token=/tmp/token \  --azure-redis-discovery=eastus

The command will generate a Database Service configuration with Azure Cache for Redis auto-discovery enabled in the eastus region and place it at the /etc/teleport.yaml location.

Step 3/5. Configure IAM permissions for Teleport

The Teleport Database Service needs Azure IAM permissions to:

• Discover and register Azure Cache for Redis databases.
• Retrieve Redis access keys to authenticate with the databases.

Configure an Azure service principal

There are a couple of ways for the Teleport Database Service to access Azure resources:

• The Database Service can run on an Azure VM with attached managed identity. This is the recommended way of deploying the Database Service in production since it eliminates the need to manage Azure credentials.
• The Database Service can be registered as a Microsoft Entra ID application (via "App registrations") and configured with its credentials. This is only recommended for development and testing purposes since it requires Azure credentials to be present in the Database Service's environment.

• Using managed identity
• Using app registrations

Go to the Managed Identities page in your Azure portal and click Create to create a new user-assigned managed identity:

Pick a name and resource group for the new identity and create it:

Take note of the created identity's Client ID:

Next, navigate to the Azure VM that will run your Database Service instance and add the identity you've just created to it:

Attach this identity to all Azure VMs that will be running the Database Service.

Note

Registering the Database Service as a Microsoft Entra ID application is suitable for test and development scenarios, or if your Database Service does not run on an Azure VM. For production scenarios prefer to use the managed identity approach.

Go to the App registrations page of Microsoft Entra ID and click on New registration:

Pick a name (e.g. DatabaseService) and register a new application. Once the app has been created, take note of its Application (client) ID and click on Add a certificate or secret:

Create a new client secret that the Database Service agent will use to authenticate with the Azure API:

The Teleport Database Service uses Azure SDK's default credential provider chain to look for credentials. Refer to Azure SDK Authorization to pick a method suitable for your use-case. For example, to use environment-based authentication with a client secret, the Database Service should have the following environment variables set:

export AZURE_TENANT_ID=export AZURE_CLIENT_ID=export AZURE_CLIENT_SECRET=

Create a custom role

Teleport requires <resource-type>/read permissions for discovery and <resource-type>/listKeys/action permissions for authentication with the Redis servers, but Teleport only needs permissions for the resource types you have.

Here is a sample role definition allowing Teleport to read and list keys for both Azure Redis and Azure Redis Enterprise:

{
    "properties": {
        "roleName": "TeleportDiscovery",
        "description": "Allows Teleport to discover Azure Cache For Redis databases and list keys",
        "assignableScopes": [
            "/subscriptions/11111111-2222-3333-4444-555555555555"
        ],
        "permissions": [
            {
                "actions": [
                    "Microsoft.Cache/redis/read",
                    "Microsoft.Cache/redis/listKeys/action",
                    "Microsoft.Cache/redisEnterprise/read",
                    "Microsoft.Cache/redisEnterprise/databases/read",
                    "Microsoft.Cache/redisEnterprise/databases/listKeys/action"
                ],
                "notActions": [],
                "dataActions": [],
                "notDataActions": []
            }
        ]
    }
}

The assignableScopes field above includes a subscription /subscriptions/<subscription>, allowing the role to be assigned at any resource scope within that subscription or the subscription scope itself. If you want to further limit the assignableScopes, you can use a resource group /subscriptions/<subscription>/resourceGroups/<group> or a management group /providers/Microsoft.Management/managementGroups/<group> instead.

Now go to the Subscriptions page and select a subscription.

Click on Access control (IAM) in the subscription and select Add > Add custom role:

In the custom role creation page, click the JSON tab and click Edit, then paste the JSON example and replace the subscription in assignableScopes with your own subscription id:

Create a role assignment for the Teleport Database Service principal

To grant Teleport permissions, the custom role you created must be assigned to the Teleport service principal - either the managed identity or the app registration you created earlier.

Navigate to the resource scope where you want to make the role assignment. Click Access control (IAM) and select Add > Add role assignment. Choose the custom role you created as the role and the Teleport service principal as a member.

Step 4/5. Start the Database Service

Configure the Teleport 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 Teleport Database Service.

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

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

Step 5/5. Connect

Log in to your Teleport cluster. Your Azure Cache for Redis databases should appear in the list of available databases:

tsh login --proxy=teleport.example.com --user=alice
tsh db ls
Name                      Description                              Allowed Users Labels  Connect ------------------------- ---------------------------------------- ------------- ------- ------- my-azure-redis            Azure Redis server in East US            [*]           ...my-azure-redis-enterprise Azure Redis Enterprise server in East US [*]           ...

tsh login --proxy=mytenant.teleport.sh --user=alice
tsh db ls
Name                      Description                              Allowed Users Labels  Connect ------------------------- ---------------------------------------- ------------- ------- ------- my-azure-redis            Azure Redis server in East US            [*]           ...my-azure-redis-enterprise Azure Redis Enterprise server in East US [*]           ...

To retrieve credentials for a database and connect to it:

tsh db connect my-azure-redis

Note that the Teleport Database Service will retrieve the access key and authenticate with the Redis server on the backend automatically. Therefore, the AUTH <access-key> command is not required here once connected.

To log out of the database and remove credentials:

tsh db logout my-azure-redis

Troubleshooting

No credential providers error

If you see the error DefaultAzureCredential: failed to acquire a token. in Database Service logs then Teleport is not detecting the required credentials to connect to the Azure SDK. Check whether the credentials have been applied in the machine running the Teleport Database Service and restart the Teleport Database Service. Refer to Azure SDK Authorization for more information.

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 server-name.postgres.database.azure.com 5432
Connection to server-name.postgres.database.azure.com 5432 port [tcp/postgresql] succeeded!

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.

Further reading

• Understand Azure Role Definitions - AssignableScopes
• Azure RBAC custom roles