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Teleport
Database Access with Redis
- Version 17.x
- Version 16.x
- Version 15.x
- Version 14.x
- Older Versions
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 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 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 chosen by the user.
In this guide, you will:
- Configure your Redis database for Teleport access.
- Add the database to your Teleport cluster.
- Connect to the database via Teleport.
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 Teleport Database Service presents a certificate signed by Teleport. The authenticated connection then proxies client traffic from the user.
Prerequisites
-
A running Teleport cluster version 16.2.1 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 andtsh
client tool.Visit Installation for instructions on downloading
tctl
andtsh
.
-
Redis version
6.0
or newer.NoteRESP3 (REdis Serialization Protocol) is currently not supported.
-
redis-cli
version6.2
or newer installed and added to your system'sPATH
environment variable. -
A host where you will run the Teleport Database Service.
See Installation for details.
-
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 runtctl
commands using your current credentials.For example:
tsh login --proxy=teleport.example.com --user=[email protected]tctl statusCluster teleport.example.com
Version 16.2.1
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 subsequenttctl
commands from your workstation. If you host your own Teleport cluster, you can also runtctl
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 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=textabcd123-insecure-do-not-use-this
Install and configure Teleport where you will run the Teleport Database Service:
Install Teleport on your Linux server:
-
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
-
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.comTELEPORT_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.comTELEPORT_VERSION="$(curl https://$TELEPORT_DOMAIN/v1/webapi/ping | jq -r '.server_version')" -
Install Teleport on your Linux server:
curl https://cdn.teleport.dev/install-v16.2.1.sh | bash -s ${TELEPORT_VERSION} editionThe 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.
On the host where you will run the Teleport Database Service, start Teleport with the appropriate configuration.
Note that a single Teleport process can run multiple different services, for
example multiple Database Service agents as well as the SSH Service or Application
Service. The step below will overwrite an existing configuration file, so if
you're running multiple services add --output=stdout
to print the config in
your terminal, and manually adjust /etc/teleport.yaml
.
Run the following command to generate a configuration file at
/etc/teleport.yaml
for the Database Service. Update
example.teleport.sh to use the host and port of the Teleport Proxy
Service:
sudo teleport db configure create \ -o file \ --token=/tmp/token \ --proxy=example.teleport.sh \ --name=example-redis \ --protocol=redis \ --uri=rediss://redis.example.com:6379 \ --labels=env=dev
To configure the Teleport Database Service to trust a custom CA:
-
Export a CA certificate for the custom CA and make it available at
/var/lib/teleport/db.ca
on the Teleport Database Service host. -
Run a variation of the command above that uses the
--ca-cert-file
flag. This configures the Teleport Database Service to use the CA certificate atdb.ca
to verify traffic from the database:sudo teleport db configure create \ -o file \ --token=/tmp/token \ --proxy=example.teleport.sh:443 \ --name=example-redis \ --protocol=redis \ --uri=rediss://redis.example.com:6379 \ --ca-cert-file="/var/lib/teleport/db.ca" \ --labels=env=dev
If your database servers use certificates that are signed by a public CA such
as ComodoCA or DigiCert, you can use the trust_system_cert_pool
option
without exporting the CA:
sudo teleport db configure create \ -o file \ --token=/tmp/token \ --proxy=example.teleport.sh:443 \ --name=example-redis \ --protocol=redis \ --uri=rediss://redis.example.com:6379 \ --trust_system_cert_pool \ --labels=env=dev
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.
On the host where you will run the Teleport Database Service, enable and start Teleport:
sudo systemctl enable teleportsudo systemctl start teleport
On the host where you will run the Teleport Database Service, create a systemd service configuration for Teleport, enable the Teleport service, and start Teleport:
sudo teleport install systemd -o /etc/systemd/system/teleport.servicesudo systemctl enable teleportsudo 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
.
Teleport provides Helm charts for installing the Teleport Database Service in Kubernetes Clusters.
Set up the Teleport Helm repository.
Allow Helm to install charts that are hosted in the Teleport Helm repository:
helm repo add teleport https://charts.releases.teleport.dev
Update the cache of charts from the remote repository so you can upgrade to all available releases:
helm repo update
Install a Teleport agent into your Kubernetes Cluster with the Teleport Database Service configuration.
Create a file called values.yaml
with the following content. Update example.teleport.sh to use the host and port of the Teleport Proxy
Service and JOIN_TOKEN to the join token you created earlier:
roles: db
proxyAddr: example.teleport.sh
# Set to false if using Teleport Community Edition
enterprise: true
authToken: "JOIN_TOKEN"
databases:
- name: example-redis
uri: rediss://redis.example.com:6379
protocol: redis
static_labels:
env: dev
To configure the Teleport Database Service to trust a custom CA:
-
Export a CA certificate for the custom CA and make it available at
db.ca
on your workstation. -
Create a secret containing the database CA certificate in the same namespace as Teleport using the following command:
kubectl create secret generic db-ca --from-file=ca.pem=/path/to/db.ca -
Add the following to
values.yaml
:roles: db proxyAddr: example.teleport.sh # Set to false if using Teleport Community Edition enterprise: true authToken: JOIN_TOKEN databases: - name: example-redis uri: rediss://redis.example.com:6379 protocol: redis + tls: + ca_cert_file: "/etc/teleport-tls-db/db-ca/ca.pem" static_labels: env: dev + extraVolumes: + - name: db-ca + secret: + secretName: db-ca + extraVolumeMounts: + - name: db-ca + mountPath: /etc/teleport-tls-db/db-ca + readOnly: true
-
Install the chart:
helm install teleport-kube-agent teleport/teleport-kube-agent \ --create-namespace \ --namespace teleport-agent \ --version 16.2.1 \ -f values.yaml -
Make sure that the Teleport agent pod is running. You should see one
teleport-kube-agent
pod with a single ready container:kubectl -n teleport-agent get podsNAME READY STATUS RESTARTS AGEteleport-kube-agent-0 1/1 Running 0 32s
A single Teleport process can run multiple services, for example multiple Database Service instances as well as other services such the SSH Service or Application Service.
Step 2/5. Create a Teleport user
To modify an existing user to provide access to the Database Service, see Database Access Controls
Create a local Teleport user with the built-in access
role:
tctl users add \ --roles=access \ --db-users="*" \ --db-names="*" \ alice
Create a local Teleport user with the built-in access
and requester
roles:
tctl users add \ --roles=access,requester \ --db-users="*" \ --db-names="*" \ alice
Flag | Description |
---|---|
--roles | List of roles to assign to the user. The builtin access role allows them to connect to any database server registered with Teleport. |
--db-users | List of database usernames the user will be allowed to use when connecting to the databases. A wildcard allows any user. |
--db-names | List of logical databases (aka schemas) the user will be allowed to connect to within a database server. A wildcard allows any database. |
Database names are only enforced for PostgreSQL, MongoDB, and Cloud Spanner databases.
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
If you have access to Redis you can also generate a password by using the below command from the Redis console:
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.
It's very important to either disable or protect with a password the default
user. Otherwise, everyone with access
to the database can log in as the default
user, which by default has administrator privileges.
Step 4/5. Set up mutual TLS
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.
To configure the database to trust the Teleport CA and issue a certificate for the database, follow these instructions on your workstation:
-
To use
tctl
from your workstation, your Teleport user must be allowed to impersonate the system roleDb
in order to be able to generate the database certificate. Include the followingallow
rule in in your Teleport user's role:allow: impersonate: users: ["Db"] roles: ["Db"]
-
Export Teleport's certificate authority and a generate certificate/key pair. This example generates a certificate with a 1-year validity period.
db.example.com
is the hostname where the Teleport Database Service can reach the Redis server.tctl auth sign --format=redis --host=db.example.com --out=server --ttl=2190hTTLWe recommend using a shorter TTL, but keep mind that you'll need to update the database server certificate before it expires to not lose the ability to connect. Pick the TTL value that best fits your use-case.
The command creates 3 files:
server.cas
,server.crt
andserver.key
.
If the Redis database already has a CA that it uses to sign certificates
, you only need to export a Teleport CA certificate for the database to
authenticate traffic from the Teleport Database Service. You do not need to
enable Db
impersonation privileges.
-
Replace example.teleport.sh:443 with the host and web port of the Teleport Proxy Service in your cluster. Run the following command on your workstation:
tctl auth export --type=db-client --auth-server=example.teleport.sh:443 > db-client.casThe command creates 1 file,
db-client.cas
. -
Append the contents of
db-client.cas
to your database's existing CA cert file, which this guide expects to be calledserver.cas
. -
Generate
server.crt
andserver.key
by retrieving a TLS certificate and private key from your existing database CA, signed for your database server. You will use these files later in the guide.
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=alicetsh db lsName Description Labels
------------- --------------- --------
example-redis Example Redis env=dev
tsh login --proxy=mytenant.teleport.sh --user=alicetsh db lsName 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-redisRemove 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
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.