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Version: 14.x

AWS Multi-Region Proxy Deployment

This deployment architecture features two important design decisions:

  • AWS Route 53 latency-based routing is used for global server load balancing (GSLB). This allows for efficient distribution of traffic across resources that are globally distributed.
  • Teleport's Proxy Peering is used to reduce the total number of tunnel connections in the Teleport cluster.

This deployment architecture isn't recommended for use cases where your users or resources are clustered in a single region, or for Managed Service Providers needing to provide separate clusters to customers.

This architecture is best suited for globally distributed resources and end-users that prefer a single point of entry while also ensuring minimal latency when accessing connected resources.

Key deployment components​

Advantages of this deployment architecture​

  • Eliminates the complexity and cost of maintaining multiple Teleport clusters across multiple regions.
  • Uses the lowest-latency path to connect users to resources.
  • Provides a highly resilient, redundant HA architecture for Teleport that can quickly scale with an organization's needs.
  • All required Teleport components can be provisioned within the AWS ecosystem.
  • Using load balancers for the Proxy and Auth Services allows for increased availability during Teleport cluster upgrades.

Disadvantages of this deployment architecture​

  • When Teleport Auth Service instances are limited to a single region, there is a higher likelihood of decreased availability during an AWS regional outage.
  • More technically complex to deploy than a single region Teleport cluster.

Diagram showing this Teleport architecture

AWS Network Load Balancer (NLB)​

AWS NLBs are required for this highly available deployment architecture. The NLB forwards traffic from users and services to an available Teleport Proxy Service instance. This must not terminate TLS, and must transparently forward the TCP traffic it receives. In other words, this must be a Layer 4 load balancer, not a Layer 7 (e.g., HTTP) load balancer.

Note

Cross-zone load balancing is required for the Auth and Proxy service NLB configurations to route traffic across multiple zones. Doing this improves resiliency against localized AWS zone outages.

Configure the Proxy Service NLBs​

Configure the load balancer to forward traffic from the following ports on the load balancer to the corresponding port on an available Teleport instance.

PortDescription
443ALPN port for TLS Routing, HTTPS connections to authenticate tsh users into the cluster, and to serve Teleport's Web UI

Configure the Auth Service NLB​

Configure the load balancer to forward traffic from the following ports on the load balancer to the corresponding port on an available Teleport instance.

Note

Proxies must have network access to the Auth Service NLB. You can accomplish this in the Route53 GSLB architecture using VPC Peering or Transit Gateways.

Internal NLB Auth Service ports

PortDescription
3025TLS port used by the Auth Service to serve its API to Proxies in a cluster

TLS credential provisioning​

High-availability Teleport deployments require a system to fetch TLS credentials from a certificate authority like Let's Encrypt, AWS Certificate Manager, Digicert, or a trusted internal authority. The system must then provision Teleport Proxy Service instances with these credentials and renew them periodically.

For high-availability deployments that use Let's Encrypt to supply TLS credentials to Teleport instances running behind a load balancer, you need to use the ACME DNS-01 challenge to demonstrate domain name ownership to Let's Encrypt. In this challenge, your TLS credential provisioning system creates a DNS TXT record with a value expected by Let's Encrypt.

Global Server Load Balancing with Route 53​

Latency-based routing in a public hosted zone must be used to ensure traffic from Teleport resources are routed to the closest or lowest latency path Proxy NLB based on the region of the VPC the resource is connecting from.

To create GSLB routing, create a CNAME record for each region where you have VPCs containing Teleport connected resources. It is recommended to add a wildcard record for every region if you plan to register applications with Teleport.

The following CNAME record values need to be set:

  • Value: The domain name of the NLB where example-region-1 located Teleport resource traffic should be routed
  • Routing policy: Latency
  • Region: The AWS region from which traffic should be routed to the NLB listed in Value
  • Health Check ID: It is recommended that you set this so that traffic is always routed to a healthy NLB

Example Hosted Zone using AWS Route53 Latency Routing to create GSLB:

Root GSLB record for Teleport​

Record nameTypeValue
*.teleport.example.comCNAMEAWS Route 53 nameservers

Teleport Proxy DNS records for GSLB​

Record nameTypeRouting PolicyRegionValue
teleport.example.comCNAMELatencyus-west-1elb.us-west-1.amazonaws.com
*.teleport.example.comCNAMELatencyus-west-1elb.us-west-1.amazonaws.com
teleport.example.comCNAMELatencyeu-central-1elb.eu_central-1.amazonaws.com
*.teleport.example.comCNAMELatencyeu-central-1elb.eu_central-1.amazonaws.com
Required permissions

If you are using Let's Encrypt to provide TLS credentials to your Teleport instances, the TLS credential system we mentioned earlier needs permissions to manage Route53 DNS records in order to satisfy Let's Encrypt's DNS-01 challenge.

Teleport resource agent configuration for GSLB​

To facilitate latency-based routing, resource agents must be configured to point proxy_server: to the GSLB domain configured in Route53, not the specific proxy NLB address.

For example:

version: v3
teleport:
    nodename: ssh-node
    ...
    proxy_server: teleport.example.com:443
    ...
    ssh_service:
        enabled: yes
    ...

Review the configuration reference page for additional settings.

Configure Proxy Peering​

In this deployment architecture, Proxy Peering is used to restrict the number of connections made from resources to proxies in the Teleport Cluster.

This guide covers the necessary Proxy Peering settings for deploying an HA Teleport Cluster routing resource traffic with GSLB.

Auth Service Proxy Peering configuration​

The Teleport Auth Service must be configured to use the proxy_peering tunnel strategy as shown in the example below:

auth_service:
 ...
 tunnel_strategy:
  type: proxy_peering
  agent_connection_count: 2

Reference the Auth Server configuration reference page for additional settings.

Proxy Service Proxy Peering configuration​

Proxies must advertise a peer address for proxy peers to establish connections to each other. The ports exposed on the Teleport Proxy Instances depends on whether you route Proxy Peering traffic over the public internet:

PortDescription
443ALPN port for TLS Routing, HTTPS connections to authenticate tsh users into the cluster, and to serve Teleport's Web UI
3021Proxy Peering gRPC Stream

Set peer_public_addr to the specific name of that proxy. This is the recommended method for lowest latency and most reliable connection.

version: v3
teleport:
...
proxy_service:
  ...
  peer_public_addr: teleport-proxy-eu-west-1-host1.example.com:3021
  ...
Note

agent_connection_count on the Auth service should be set to a value >=2 to decrease the likelihood of agents being unavailable.

Reference the Proxy Service configuration reference page for additional settings.