Teleport

Configure Teleport to Automatically Enroll EC2 instances

Available for:
OpenSource
Team
Cloud
Enterprise

The Teleport Discovery Service can connect to Amazon EC2 and automatically discover and enroll EC2 instances matching configured labels. It will then execute an install script on these discovered instances using AWS Systems Manager that will install Teleport, start it and join the cluster.

In this scenario, Teleport Discovery Service uses an IAM invite token with a long time-to-live (TTL), so that new instances can be discovered and added to the Teleport cluster for the lifetime of the token.

Prerequisites

A running Teleport cluster. For details on how to set this up, see the Getting Started guide.
The tctl admin tool and tsh client tool version >= 14.0.1.

See Installation for details.

A Teleport Team account. If you don't have an account, sign up to begin your free trial.
The Enterprise tctl admin tool and tsh client tool, version >= 13.3.9.

You can download these tools from the Cloud Downloads page.

A running Teleport Enterprise cluster. For details on how to set this up, see the Enterprise Getting Started guide.
The Enterprise tctl admin tool and tsh client tool version >= 14.0.1.

You can download these tools by visiting your Teleport account workspace.

Cloud is not available for Teleport v.
Please use the latest version of Teleport Enterprise documentation.

To check version information, run the tctl version and tsh version commands. For example:

tctl version
Teleport Enterprise v13.3.9 git:api/14.0.0-gd1e081e go1.21

tsh version
Teleport v13.3.9 go1.21
Proxy version: 13.3.9Proxy: teleport.example.com

AWS account with EC2 instances and permissions to create and attach IAM policies.
EC2 instances running Ubuntu/Debian/RHEL/Amazon Linux 2 and SSM agent version 3.1 or greater if making use of the default Teleport install script. (For other Linux distributions, you can install Teleport manually.)
To check that you can connect to your Teleport cluster, sign in with tsh login, then verify that you can run tctl commands on your administrative workstation using your current credentials. For example:
```
tsh login --proxy=teleport.example.com --user=[email protected]
tctl status
Cluster  teleport.example.com
Version  14.0.1
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 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 1/7. Create an EC2 invite token

When discovering EC2 instances, Teleport makes use of IAM invite tokens for authenticating joining Nodes.

Create a file called token.yaml:

# token.yaml
kind: token
version: v2
metadata:
  # the token name is not a secret because instances must prove that they are
  # running in your AWS account to use this token
  name: aws-discovery-iam-token
spec:
  # use the minimal set of roles required (e.g. Node, App, Kube, DB, WindowsDesktop)
  roles: [Node]

  # set the join method allowed for this token
  join_method: iam

  allow:
  # specify the AWS account which Nodes may join from
  - aws_account: "123456789"

Assign the aws_account field to your AWS account number. Add the token to the Teleport cluster with:

tctl create -f token.yaml

Step 2/7. Define an IAM policy

The teleport discovery bootstrap command will automate the process of defining and implementing IAM policies required to make auto-discovery work. It requires only a single pre-defined policy, attached to the EC2 instance running the command:

{
    "Version": "2012-10-17",
    "Statement": [
        {
            "Effect": "Allow",
            "Action": [
                "iam:GetPolicy",
                "iam:TagPolicy",
                "iam:ListPolicyVersions",
                "iam:CreatePolicyVersion",
                "iam:CreatePolicy",
                "ssm:CreateDocument",
                "iam:DeletePolicyVersion",
                "iam:AttachRolePolicy",
                "iam:PutRolePermissionsBoundary"
            ],
            "Resource": "*"
        }
    ]
}

Create this policy and apply it to the Node (EC2 instance) that will run the Discovery Service.

Step 3/7. Install Teleport on the Discovery Node

Tip

If you plan on running the Discovery Service on the same Node already running another Teleport service (Auth or Proxy, for example), you can skip this step.

Install Teleport on the EC2 instance that will run the Discovery Service:

Select an edition, then follow the instructions for that edition to install Teleport.

Teleport Edition

curl https://goteleport.com/static/install.sh | bash -s 14.0.1

Add the Teleport repository to your repository list:

Download Teleport's PGP public key
sudo curl https://apt.releases.teleport.dev/gpg \-o /usr/share/keyrings/teleport-archive-keyring.asc
Source variables about OS version
source /etc/os-release
Add the Teleport APT repository for cloud.
echo "deb [signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/teleport-archive-keyring.asc] \https://apt.releases.teleport.dev/${ID?} ${VERSION_CODENAME?} stable/cloud" \| sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/teleport.list > /dev/null

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install teleport-ent-updater

Source variables about OS version
source /etc/os-release
Add the Teleport YUM repository for cloud.
First, get the OS major version from $VERSION_ID so this fetches the correct
package version.
VERSION_ID=$(echo $VERSION_ID | grep -Eo "^[0-9]+")
sudo yum-config-manager --add-repo "$(rpm --eval "https://yum.releases.teleport.dev/$ID/$VERSION_ID/Teleport/%{_arch}/stable/cloud/teleport-yum.repo")"
sudo yum install teleport-ent-updater
Tip: Add /usr/local/bin to path used by sudo (so 'sudo tctl users add' will work as per the docs)
echo "Defaults    secure_path = /sbin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/usr/local/bin" > /etc/sudoers.d/secure_path

Source variables about OS version
source /etc/os-release
Add the Teleport YUM repository for cloud.
First, get the OS major version from $VERSION_ID so this fetches the correct
package version.
VERSION_ID=$(echo $VERSION_ID | grep -Eo "^[0-9]+")
Use the dnf config manager plugin to add the teleport RPM repo
sudo dnf config-manager --add-repo "$(rpm --eval "https://yum.releases.teleport.dev/$ID/$VERSION_ID/Teleport/%{_arch}/stable/cloud/teleport-yum.repo")"

Install teleport
sudo dnf install teleport-ent-updater

Tip: Add /usr/local/bin to path used by sudo (so 'sudo tctl users add' will work as per the docs)
echo "Defaults    secure_path = /sbin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/usr/local/bin" > /etc/sudoers.d/secure_path

Source variables about OS version
source /etc/os-release
Add the Teleport Zypper repository for cloud.
First, get the OS major version from $VERSION_ID so this fetches the correct
package version.
VERSION_ID=$(echo $VERSION_ID | grep -Eo "^[0-9]+")
Use Zypper to add the teleport RPM repo
sudo zypper addrepo --refresh --repo $(rpm --eval "https://zypper.releases.teleport.dev/$ID/$VERSION_ID/Teleport/%{_arch}/stable/cloud/teleport-zypper.repo")

Install teleport
sudo zypper install teleport-ent-updater

OS repository channels

The following channels are available for APT, YUM, and Zypper repos. They may be used in place of stable/v14 anywhere in the Teleport documentation.

Channel name	Description
`stable/<major>`	Receives releases for the specified major release line, i.e. `v14`
`stable/cloud`	Rolling channel that receives releases compatible with current Cloud version
`stable/rolling`	Rolling channel that receives all published Teleport releases

Before installing a teleport binary with a version besides v13, read our compatibility rules to ensure that the binary is compatible with Teleport Cloud.

When running multiple teleport binaries within a cluster, the following rules apply:

Patch and minor versions are always compatible, for example, any 8.0.1 component will work with any 8.0.3 component and any 8.1.0 component will work with any 8.3.0 component.
Servers support clients that are 1 major version behind, but do not support clients that are on a newer major version. For example, an 8.x.x Proxy Service is compatible with 7.x.x resource services and 7.x.x tsh, but we don't guarantee that a 9.x.x resource service will work with an 8.x.x Proxy Service. This also means you must not attempt to upgrade from 6.x.x straight to 8.x.x. You must upgrade to 7.x.x first.
Proxy Services and resource services do not support Auth Services that are on an older major version, and will fail to connect to older Auth Services by default. This behavior can be overridden by passing --skip-version-check when starting Proxy Services and resource services.

Download Teleport's PGP public key
sudo curl https://apt.releases.teleport.dev/gpg \-o /usr/share/keyrings/teleport-archive-keyring.asc
Source variables about OS version
source /etc/os-release
Add the Teleport APT repository for v14. You'll need to update this
file for each major release of Teleport.
echo "deb [signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/teleport-archive-keyring.asc] \https://apt.releases.teleport.dev/${ID?} ${VERSION_CODENAME?} stable/v14" \| sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/teleport.list > /dev/null

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install teleport-ent