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Version: 19.x (unreleased)

Run the Teleport Terraform Provider on env zero

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This guide demonstrates how to use the Terraform provider for Teleport in jobs running on env zero.

This guide does not cover running the Terraform provider locally, in other CI/CD environments, or in short-lived cloud VMs. In any of these cases, refer to a dedicated guide:

How it works​

When running the Teleport Terraform provider on env zero, you can use its built-in Machine & Workload ID support to dynamically authenticate to your Teleport cluster without any shared secrets.

To do so, Teleport can make use of env zero's support for General OIDC Integrations, which provides OIDC tokens to jobs run on env zero's platform. The Teleport Terraform provider can then use these tokens to prove its identity to your Teleport cluster.

While following this guide, you'll configure your Teleport cluster to accept join requests from env zero deployments and configure the provider to authenticate using the env0 join method.

Prerequisites​

  • A running Teleport 18.4.0 cluster. If you want to get started with Teleport, sign up for a free trial or set up a demo environment.

  • The tctl and tsh clients.

    Installing tctl and tsh clients

    1. Determine the version of your Teleport cluster. The tctl and tsh clients must be at most one major version behind your Teleport cluster version. Send a GET request to the Proxy Service at /v1/webapi/find and use a JSON query tool to obtain your cluster version. Replace teleport.example.com:443 with the web address of your Teleport Proxy Service:

      TELEPORT_DOMAIN=teleport.example.com:443
      TELEPORT_VERSION="$(curl -s https://$TELEPORT_DOMAIN/v1/webapi/find | jq -r '.server_version')"

    2. Follow the instructions for your platform to install tctl and tsh clients:

      Download the signed macOS .pkg installer for Teleport, which includes the tctl and tsh clients:

      curl -O https://cdn.teleport.dev/teleport-${TELEPORT_VERSION?}.pkg

      In Finder double-click the pkg file to begin installation.

      danger

      Using Homebrew to install Teleport is not supported. The Teleport package in Homebrew is not maintained by Teleport and we can't guarantee its reliability or security.

  • Check that you can connect to your Teleport cluster and verify that you can run tctl and tsh commands using your current credentials.

    1. Assign teleport.example.com to the domain name of the Teleport Proxy Service in your cluster and [email protected] to your Teleport username.

    2. Authenticate to your Teleport cluster. This depends on whether your shell is interactive or not.

      In an interactive shell: Run the following command. By default, this triggers a multi-factor authentication prompt:

      tsh login --proxy=teleport.example.com --user=[email protected]
      tctl status
      Cluster  teleport.example.com
      Version  19.0.0-dev
      CA pin   sha256:abdc1245efgh5678abdc1245efgh5678abdc1245efgh5678abdc1245efgh5678

      On non-interactive environments: If you are running tsh and tctl as an AI agent, in a CI/CD environment, or similar, make sure the TELEPORT_IDENTITY_FILE environment variable is assigned to a valid file path with credentials for your cluster. tsh and tctl read the file path from the environment variable and do not require a separate authentication step. If there is no identity file available, we recommend that you set up Machine ID to provision one automatically.

      When executing tctl commands with an identity file, you must pass the --auth-server flag to provide the Teleport Auth Service address, which is not included in the identity file. If you provide the Proxy Service address, tctl connects to the Proxy Service, which forwards traffic to and from the Teleport Auth Service. Update 443 to 3025 if you are contacting the Auth Service directly with tctl:

      tctl status --auth-server=teleport.example.com:443

      For tsh commands that read an identity file, you must pass the --proxy flag, which points tsh to the address of the Teleport Proxy Service:

      tsh status --proxy=teleport.example.com

      Ensure client commands can access your identity file. Replace path/to/identity/file with the path to your identity file:

      export TELEPORT_IDENTITY_FILE="${TELEPORT_IDENTITY_FILE:-path/to/identity/file}"

      Add the --auth-server or --proxy flags to all subsequent tctl and tsh commands.

    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.

  • Terraform >= 1.0.0+

    terraform version
    Terraform v1.0.0

    To import existing Teleport resources as Terraform resources, you must have Terraform version v1.5.0 or above.

  • An account and project on env zero

  • The Teleport Terraform provider, v18.4.0 or later

Step 1/5: Enable OIDC in env zero​

OIDC integrations must be enabled in your organization's credential settings. To do so:

  1. Navigate to your organization settings
  2. Select the "Policies" tab
  3. Under the "Third-Party Authentication" header, ensure "Enable OIDC during deployments" is checked
  4. If necessary, select "Save"

For more information, refer to env zero's documentation.

Step 2/5. Collect information​

To allow deployment workflows to authenticate to Teleport, you'll need to configure - at a minimum - the IDs of your organization and project. These values can be found in the env zero UI.

To determine your organization ID, navigate to your organization's settings, select the "General" tab, and make a note of the value shown in the ID field. If desired, store your organization ID here: example-organization-id

Next, you'll also need to retrieve a project ID. Navigate to the settings for the desired project and make a note of the ID shown. If desired, you can insert it here: example-project-id

Step 3/5. Configure env zero joining in Teleport​

To start, the Teleport Auth Service needs to be configured to accept join requests from env zero runs. We'll do this by creating a bot named terraform which the Teleport Terraform provider will use in a later step.

Write the following to terraform_bot.yaml:

kind: bot
version: v1
metadata:
  name: terraform
spec:
  # The terraform-provider role is a built-in role granting access to every
  # resource supported by the terraform provider.
  roles: ["terraform-provider"]

Then, create the bot from the new YAML manifest:

tctl create -f terraform_bot.yaml
bot 'terraform' has been created

Next, the new bot needs to be allowed to authenticate with env zero's OIDC credentials. Create a file named terraform_token.yaml with this content:

kind: token
version: v2
metadata:
  name: terraform
spec:
  roles: [Bot]
  join_method: env0
  bot_name: terraform
  env0:
    allow:
      - organization_id: example-organization-id
        project_id: example-project-id

Additional allow rules fields may be used to further restrict which jobs are allowed to authenticate , refer to the env0 join method reference for a full list of options.

Note that all specified fields must match those presented to Teleport by a deployment job for it to be allowed to join. If you want to allow multiple different projects to join, you can add additional entries to the allow field. Additionally, note that each entry must provide at minimum organization_id and a project identifier (project_id or project_name).

Once finished, create the token:

tctl create -f terraform_token.yaml
token 'terraform' has been created

Step 4/5. Configure the Terraform Provider​

In your provider.tf or similar, configure the teleport provider:

provider "teleport" {
  addr = "example.teleport.sh:443"
  join_method = "env0"
  join_token = "terraform"
}

These parameters must be set:

  • addr should match the public hostname and port of your Teleport cluster
  • join_method should be env0
  • join_token should match the name of the token resource created in Step #2

Be sure to remove any preexisting identity_file_path; it is replaced by join_method and join_token.

For a complete example, consider this minimal provider.tf:

terraform {
  required_providers {
    teleport = {
      source  = "terraform.releases.teleport.dev/gravitational/teleport"
      version = "13.3.7"
    }
  }
}

provider "teleport" {
  addr = "example.teleport.sh:443"
  join_method = "env0"
  join_token = "terraform"
}

resource "teleport_role" "test" {
  version = "v7"
  metadata = {
    name        = "test"
    description = "Dummy role to validate Terraform Provider setup"
    labels = {
      test = "yes"
    }
  }
}

Step 5/5. Run Terraform​

You should now be able to perform a Terraform plan or apply. All types of triggers should work, including CLI, API, and Git, so long as the run is coordinated by Terraform Cloud.

If your local terraform is authenticated to env zero and Remote Plan is configured, you can run:

terraform plan

Otherwise, you can trigger a job execution through whichever means you normally use: manually, via a Git hook, etc.

Regardless of trigger, the workflow should successfully execute, depending on your Terraform configuration. You can use tctl to verify the dummy role was created:

tctl get role/test

Next steps​

  • Now that you know how to manage Teleport configuration resources with Terraform and env zero, read the Terraform resource reference so you can flesh out your configuration.
  • To find out more about env zero's OIDC implementation, which Machine & Workload ID uses to authenticate to your Teleport cluster, read env zero's documentation.