Database Access with Self-Hosted MySQL/MariaDB

Teleport can provide secure access to MySQL or MariaDB via the Teleport Database Service. This allows for fine-grained access control through the Teleport RBAC system.

The Teleport Database Service proxies traffic from database clients to self-hosted databases in your infrastructure. Teleport maintains a certificate authority (CA) for database clients. You configure your database to trust the Teleport database client CA, and the Teleport Database Service presents certificates signed by this CA when proxying user traffic. With this setup, there is no need to store long-lived credentials for self-hosted databases.

Meanwhile, the Teleport Database Service verifies self-hosted databases by checking their TLS certificates against either the Teleport database CA or a custom CA used with the database.

In this guide, you will:

1. Configure your MySQL or MariaDB database for Teleport access.
2. Add the database to your Teleport cluster.
3. Connect to the database via Teleport.

How it works

The Teleport Database Service authenticates to your self-hosted MySQL or MariaDB database using mutual TLS. MySQL or MariaDB 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 Teleport Database Service presents a certificate signed by Teleport. The authenticated connection then proxies client traffic from the user.

• 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.

• A self-hosted MySQL or MariaDB instance.
• A host, e.g., an Amazon EC2 instance, where you will run the Teleport Database Service.
• Optional: a certificate authority that issues certificates for your self-hosted database.
• 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 1/4. Create the Teleport Database Token

The Database Service requires a valid join token to join your Teleport cluster. Run the following tctl command and save the token output in /tmp/token on the server that will run the Database Service:

tctl tokens add --type=db --format=text
abcd123-insecure-do-not-use-this

Step 2/4. Create a certificate/key pair

Teleport uses mutual TLS authentication with self-hosted databases. These databases must be able to verify certificates presented by the Teleport Database Service. Self-hosted databases also need a certificate/key pair that Teleport can verify.

By default, the Teleport Database Service trusts certificates issued by a certificate authority managed by the Teleport Auth Service. You can either:

• Configure your self-hosted database to trust this CA, and instruct Teleport to issue a certificate for the database to present to the Teleport Database Service.
• Configure the Database Service to trust a custom CA.

Step 3/4. Configure MySQL/MariaDB

[mysqld]
require_secure_transport=ON
ssl-ca=/path/to/server.cas
ssl-cert=/path/to/server.crt
ssl-key=/path/to/server.key

[mariadb]
require_secure_transport=ON
ssl-ca=/path/to/server.cas
ssl-cert=/path/to/server.crt
ssl-key=/path/to/server.key

Restart the database instance to enable this configuration. Additionally, your MySQL/MariaDB database user accounts must be configured to require a valid client certificate.

CREATE USER 'alice'@'%' REQUIRE SUBJECT '/CN=alice';

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

ALTER USER 'alice'@'%' REQUIRE SUBJECT '/CN=alice';

SET PASSWORD FOR 'alice'@'%' = PASSWORD("");

See Configuring MySQL to Use Encrypted Connections in the MySQL documentation or Enabling TLS on MariaDB Server in the MariaDB documentation for more details.

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.

Configure and Start the Database Service

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

sudo teleport db configure create \   -o file \   --token=/tmp/token \   --proxy=example.teleport.sh \   --name=example-mysql \   --protocol=mysql \   --uri=mysql.example.com:3306 \   --labels=env=dev 

sudo teleport db configure create \   -o file \   --token=/tmp/token \   --proxy=example.teleport.sh:443 \   --name=example-mysql \   --protocol=mysql \   --uri=mysql.example.com:3306 \   --trust_system_cert_pool \   --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

roles: db
proxyAddr: example.teleport.sh
# Set to false if using Teleport Community Edition
enterprise: true
authToken: "JOIN_TOKEN"
databases:
  - name: example-mysql
    uri: mysql.example.com:3306
    protocol: mysql
    static_labels:
      env: dev

Step 4/4. Connect

Once the Database Service has joined the cluster, log in to see the available databases:

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

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

Note that you will only be able to see databases your role has access to. See the RBAC guide for more details.

To retrieve credentials for a database and connect to it:

tsh db connect --db-user=root --db-name=mysql example-mysql

To log out of the database and remove credentials:

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