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Version: 19.x (unreleased)

Get Started with Kubernetes Application Discovery

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Teleport can automatically detect applications running in your Kubernetes clusters and register them with your Teleport cluster. In this setup, users with Kubernetes-hosted infrastructure can configure secure access to any new applications they deploy with no need for manual intervention beyond the initial setup step.

In this guide, you will enable Kubernetes application auto-discovery.

How it works​

The Teleport Discovery Service queries the API server of the Kubernetes cluster in which you want to detect applications, maintaining dynamic app resources to match the Kubernetes services that it detects within the cluster. The Teleport Application Service queries the Teleport Auth Service to fetch app resources, and proxies applications based the dynamically generated configuration.

Prerequisites​

  • A running Teleport 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.

  • A Kubernetes cluster version >= v1.17.0

  • Helm >= 3.4.2

    Verify that Helm and Kubernetes are installed and up to date.

    helm version
    version.BuildInfo{Version:"v3.4.2"}

    kubectl version
    Client Version: version.Info{Major:"1", Minor:"17+"}
    Server Version: version.Info{Major:"1", Minor:"17+"}

  • 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.

Step 1/2. Create a join token​

Create a join token for a new Teleport Agent that will run the Teleport Kubernetes Service, Application Service, and Discovery Service:

tctl tokens add --type=kube,app,discovery

Enabling the discovery role by default will automatically start the discovery of Kubernetes services and registration of Teleport applications from them. And enabling app role on the chart will start the process of proxying all new Teleport applications created from discovered Kubernetes services.

Step 2/2. Deploy the agent​

If you want to install a new Teleport Agent in your Kubernetes cluster, you can use the teleport-kube-agent Helm chart. If you already have a Teleport Agent installed, you can upgrade it to enable the Kubernetes Application Discovery by adding the kube, app, and discovery to roles as shown below.

Deploy a new Teleport Agent running your configured services by installing the teleport-kube-agent Helm chart, assigning proxy-address to the host and port of your Teleport Proxy Service and token to the join token you created earlier:

helm install teleport-agent teleport/teleport-kube-agent \  --set roles=kube\,app\,discovery \  --set kubeClusterName=main-cluster \  --set proxyAddr=proxy-address \  --set authToken=token \  --create-namespace \  --namespace=teleport

Troubleshooting​

First, make sure that all expected agents for the Teleport Discovery, Application, and Kubernetes Services are running. The token you created for them must have the required roles.

If agents are running, but you don't see expected apps appearing in Teleport, there could be two main reasons:

  • The Teleport Discovery Service can't find relevant Kubernetes services.
  • The Teleport Application Service can't proxy discovered applications.

Make sure that Kubernetes service account under which the Discovery Service is running has enough permissions to list the cluster's services. Also make sure that labels and namespaces configuration is correct.

For the Application Service, make sure that labels in resources field are defined correctly, specifically that label teleport.dev/kubernetes-cluster matches discovery_group field of the Discovery Service running in the Kubernetes cluster.

Next steps​

You can configure the scope of the Discovery Service. For more information, see teleport-kube-agent helm chart documentation.