Machine ID with Databases

In this guide, we will demonstrate how to use Machine ID to access a database protected by Teleport from a custom application.

With Machine ID, Teleport issues short-lived certificates, tied to a machine identity, that can be rotated, audited, and managed with the same access controls that Teleport provides for human users.

Prerequisites

You will need to be running the Teleport Proxy and Auth Services, version 9.3.0 or later.

If you have not already put your database behind Teleport Database Access, follow the Database Access Getting Started Guide. Database Access supports databases like PostgreSQL, MongoDB, Redis, and much more. See our Database Access Guides for a complete list.

If you have not already set up Machine ID, follow the Machine ID Getting Started Guide to familiarize yourself with Machine ID. You'll need tctl access to initially configure the bot.

tsh login --proxy=teleport.example.com [email protected]
tctl status
Cluster  teleport.example.com
Version  12.1.1
CA pin   sha256:abdc1245efgh5678abdc1245efgh5678abdc1245efgh5678abdc1245efgh5678

tsh login --proxy=myinstance.teleport.sh [email protected]
tctl status
Cluster  myinstance.teleport.sh
Version  12.1.2
CA pin   sha256:sha-hash-here

Lastly, ensure both the tbot and tsh executables are available on your application host. See Installation for details.

Step 1/3. Create a Machine ID bot and assign permissions

In the example below, you will create a bot user named app and assign this bot user the machine-id-db role.

First, create a role that Machine ID can use to access your database:

kind: role
version: v5
metadata:
  name: machine-id-db
spec:
  allow:
    db_labels:
      '*': '*'
    db_names: [example]
    db_users: [alice]
    rules:
      - resources: [db_server, db]
        verbs: [read, list]

This role allows Machine ID bots to do two things:

1. Access the database example on any database server (due to the '*': '*' label selector) as the user alice. You may restrict access to the bot using a more specific label selector; see the Database Access RBAC guide for more info.
2. Discover information about databases in Teleport.

Write this to role.yaml and run the following to create the role in Teleport:

tctl create -f role.yaml

With the role created, create a new bot and allow it to assume the new role.

Connect to the Teleport Auth Server and use tctl to create the bot:

tctl bots add app --roles=machine-id-db

Step 2/3. Configure and start Machine ID

Next, we'll run Machine ID alongside our database client app to begin fetching credentials.

Start by creating a configuration file for Machine ID at /etc/tbot.yaml:

auth_server: "teleport.example.com:443"
onboarding:
  join_method: "token"
  token: "abcd123-insecure-do-not-use-this"
  ca_pins:
  - "sha256:abdc1245efgh5678abdc1245efgh5678abdc1245efgh5678abdc1245efgh5678"
storage:
  directory: /var/lib/teleport/bot
destinations:
  - directory: /opt/machine-id
    
    database:
      service: example-server
      username: alice
      database: example
    
    # If using MongoDB, be sure to include the Mongo-formatted certificates:
    configs:
      - mongo

Be sure to configure the token and ca_pins fields to match the output from tctl bots add .... We've also included the mongo config template in the configs section to generate additional certificates for MongoDB; you can remove it if using a different database type.

Machine ID also allows you to use Linux ACLs to control access to certificates on disk. You will use this to ensure only your application has access to the short-lived certificates Machine ID uses.

We'll work with the assumption you will be running Machine ID as the Linux user teleport and your application as the Linux user app. Create and initialize the destination directory by running this tbot init command either as root or as the teleport user:

tbot init \    -c /etc/tbot.yaml \    --init-dir=/opt/machine-id \    --bot-user=teleport \    --owner=teleport:teleport \    --reader-user=app

Create the bot data directory and grant permissions to access it to the Linux user (in our example, teleport) which tbot will run as.

Make the bot directory and assign ownership to teleport user
sudo mkdir -p /var/lib/teleport/bot
sudo chown teleport:teleport /var/lib/teleport/bot
Allow teleport user to open directory
sudo chmod +x /var/lib/teleport /var/lib/teleport/bot

Next, you will use systemd to run Machine ID in the background on your application node. Create a systemd.unit file at /etc/systemd/system/machine-id.service:

[Unit]
Description=Teleport Machine ID Service
After=network.target

[Service]
Type=simple
User=teleport
Group=teleport
Restart=on-failure
Environment="TELEPORT_ANONYMOUS_TELEMETRY=1"
ExecStart=/usr/local/bin/tbot start -c /etc/tbot.yaml
ExecReload=/bin/kill -HUP $MAINPID
PIDFile=/run/machine-id.pid
LimitNOFILE=524288

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

TELEPORT_ANONYMOUS_TELEMETRY enables the submission of anonymous usage telemetry. This helps us shape the future development of tbot. You can disable this by omitting this.

Additionally, we'll need to create a secondary service to manage the database proxy. Create another unit file at /etc/systemd/system/machine-id-proxy.service:

[Unit]
Description=Teleport Machine ID Proxy Service
After=network.target
Requires=machine-id.service

[Service]
Type=simple
User=teleport
Group=teleport
Restart=on-failure
ExecStart=/usr/local/bin/tbot -c /etc/tbot.yaml proxy --proxy=proxy.example.com:3080 --destination-dir=/opt/machine-id db --port=12345 example-server
ExecReload=/bin/kill -HUP $MAINPID
PIDFile=/run/machine-id-proxy.pid
LimitNOFILE=8192

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

This will start a local proxy on port 12345 applications can use to connect to the example-server database server. Be sure to customize the tbot parameters as necessary for your local setup.

Finally, run the following commands to start Machine ID:

sudo systemctl enable machine-id machine-id-proxy
sudo systemctl start machine-id machine-id-proxy
sudo systemctl status machine-id machine-id-proxy

Step 3/3. Update and run your application

In the default proxy mode, database clients must also be configured to use tbot's generated TLS certificates. This ensures no other users of the system can access the database via the local proxy, and ensures the connection between your database client and server is never unencrypted, even over localhost.

The standard TLS credentials may be found in your configured destination directory, which in this example is /opt/machine-id. The certificate may be found at /opt/machine-id/tlscert along with the private key /opt/machine-id/key and CA at /opt/machine-id/teleport-database-ca.crt. These are compatible with most database clients.

Certain databases may require specially-formatted certificates. Where supported, tbot provides configuration templates you may configure via the tbot.yaml config file on a per-destination basis:

The mongo template is enabled in the example tbot.yaml shown above. If config template changes are needed, be sure to re-run tbot init ... to configure the new output files, then restart tbot with systemctl restart machine-id machine-id-proxy.

Once the necessary credentials for your database are ready to use, refer to these sample Go programs to test connectivity to your database.

// This example program demonstrates how to connect to a Postgres database
// using certificates issued by Teleport Machine ID.

package main

import (
	"database/sql"
	"fmt"
	"log"

	_ "github.com/jackc/pgx/v4/stdlib"
)

func main() {
	// Open connection to database.
	db, err := sql.Open("pgx", fmt.Sprint(
		"host=localhost ",
		"port=1234 ",
		"dbname=example ",
		"user=alice ",
		"sslmode=verify-full ",
		"sslrootcert=/opt/machine-id/teleport-database-ca.crt ",
		"sslkey=/opt/machine-id/key ",
		"sslcert=/opt/machine-id/tlscert ",
	))
	if err != nil {
		log.Fatalf("Failed to open database: %v.", err)
	}

	defer db.Close()

	// Call "Ping" to test connectivity.
	err = db.Ping()
	if err != nil {
		log.Fatalf("Failed to Ping database: %v.", err)
	}

	log.Printf("Successfully connected to PostgreSQL.")
}

// This example program demonstrates how to connect to a MongoDB database
// using certificates issued by Teleport Machine ID.

package main

import (
	"context"
	"fmt"
	"log"
	"time"

	"go.mongodb.org/mongo-driver/bson"
	"go.mongodb.org/mongo-driver/mongo"
	"go.mongodb.org/mongo-driver/mongo/options"
)

func main() {
	ctx, cancel := context.WithTimeout(context.Background(), 10*time.Second)
	defer cancel()

	// Create client and connect to MongoDB. Make sure to modify the host,
	// port, and certificate paths.
	uri := fmt.Sprintf(
		"mongodb://localhost:1234/?tlsCAFile=%s&tlsCertificateKeyFile=%s",
		"/opt/machine-id/mongo.cas",
		"/opt/machine-id/mongo.crt",
	)
	client, err := mongo.NewClient(options.Client().ApplyURI(uri))
	if err != nil {
		log.Fatalf("Failed to create database client: %v.", err)
	}
	err = client.Connect(ctx)
	if err != nil {
		log.Fatalf("Failed to connect to database: %v.", err)
	}

	defer client.Disconnect(ctx)

	log.Printf("Successfully connected to MongoDB.")

	// List databases to test connectivity.
	databases, err := client.ListDatabaseNames(ctx, bson.M{})
	if err != nil {
		log.Fatalf("Failed to list databases: %v.", err)
	}
	log.Println(databases)

}

You are all set. You have provided your application with short-lived certificates tied to a machine identity that can access your database, be rotated, and audited, all while being controlled with all the familiar Teleport access controls.

Next steps

More information about TELEPORT_ANONYMOUS_TELEMETRY.