
When running on an AWS EC2 instance, Teleport will automatically detect and import EC2 tags as
Teleport labels for SSH nodes, Applications, Databases, and Kubernetes clusters. Labels created
this way will have the aws/
prefix. When the Teleport process starts, it fetches all tags from
the instance metadata service and adds them as labels. The process will update the tags every hour,
so newly created or deleted tags will be reflected in the labels.
If the tag TeleportHostname
(case-sensitive) is present, its value will override the node's hostname.
$ tsh ls
Node Name Address Labels
-------------------- -------------- -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
fakehost.example.com 127.0.0.1:3022 env=example,hostname=ip-172-31-53-70,aws/Name=atburke-dev,aws/TagKey=TagValue,aws/TeleportHostname=fakehost.example.com
For services that manage multiple resources (such as the Database Service), each resource will receive the same labels from EC2.
Prerequisites
-
A running Teleport cluster. For details on how to set this up, see one of our Getting Started guides.
-
The
tctl
admin tool andtsh
client tool version >= 13.0.3.tctl versionTeleport v13.0.3 go1.20
tsh versionTeleport v13.0.3 go1.20
See Installation for details.
-
A running Teleport Enterprise cluster. For details on how to set this up, see our Enterprise Getting Started guide.
-
The Enterprise
tctl
admin tool andtsh
client tool version >= 13.0.3, which you can download by visiting your Teleport account.tctl versionTeleport Enterprise v13.0.3 go1.20
tsh versionTeleport v13.0.3 go1.20
Please use the latest version of Teleport Enterprise documentation.
- One Teleport Node running on an Amazon EC2 instance. See Adding Nodes for how to set up a Teleport Node.
Enable tags in instance metadata
To allow Teleport to import EC2 tags, tags must be enabled in the instance metadata. This can be done via the AWS console or the AWS CLI. See the AWS documentation for more details.
Only instances that are running on the Nitro system will update their tags while running. All other instance types must be restarted to update tags.
AWS EC2 Console
To launch a new instance with instance metadata tags enabled:
- Open
Advanced Options
at the bottom of the page. - Ensure that
Metadata accessible
is not disabled. - Enable
Allow tags in metadata
.

To modify an existing instance to enable instance metadata tags:
- From the instance summary, go to
Actions > Instance Settings > Allow tags in instance metadata
. - Enable
Allow
.


AWS CLI
To modify the instance at launch:
aws ec2 run-instances \ --image-id <image-id> \ --instance-type <instance-type> \ --metadata-options "InstanceMetadataTags=enabled"...
To modify a running instance:
aws ec2 modify-instance-metadata-options \ --instance-id i-123456789example \ --instance-metadata-tags enabled