Teleport FAQ
Can I use Teleport in production today?
Teleport has been deployed on server clusters with thousands of hosts at Fortune 500 companies. It has been through several security audits from nationally recognized technology security companies, so we are comfortable with the stability of Teleport from a security perspective.
Can Teleport be deployed in agentless mode?
Yes. All Teleport services support agentless mode, where the service proxies
traffic to an upstream infrastructure resource not available on localhost.
With Teleport in agentless mode, you can easily control access to SSH servers, Kubernetes clusters, desktops, databases, and internal applications without running any additional software on your servers. Agentless mode supports session recordings and audit logs for deep understanding into user behavior.
For capabilities such as kernel-level logging and user provisioning, we recommend Teleport as a drop in replacement for OpenSSH. Since Teleport replaces the OpenSSH agent while preserving OpenSSH's functionality, you get more functionality without a net addition of an agent on your system.
Can I use OpenSSH with a Teleport cluster?
Yes, this question comes up often and is related to the previous one. Take a look at Using OpenSSH Guide.
Can I connect to nodes behind a firewall?
Yes, Teleport supports reverse SSH tunnels out of the box. To configure behind-firewall clusters, see Configure Trusted Clusters.
Should we use Teleport Enterprise or Teleport Community Edition for connecting resources to our Teleport cluster?
Teleport Enterprise and Enterprise Cloud customers should use the Enterprise release of the
teleport binary for agents. Running the Community Edition binary could result in
incompatibility to these cluster editions for certain features.
To verify you have a Teleport Enterprise release installed run the teleport version
command and Enterprise will be in the output.
$ teleport version
# Teleport Enterprise v14.3.33 go1.21
Teleport Community Edition clusters should use the Teleport Community Edition releases. The teleport version
command will only include Teleport in its output for those releases.
$ teleport version
# Teleport v14.3.33 go1.21
See the Installation guide for details on installing to specific platforms with Enterprise or Teleport Community Edition releases.
Can individual agents create reverse tunnels to the Proxy Service without creating a new cluster?
Yes. When running a Teleport agent, use the --auth-server flag to point to the
Proxy Service address (this would be public_addr and web_listen_addr in your
file configuration). For more information, see
Adding Nodes to the
Cluster.
Can Nodes use a single port for reverse tunnels?
Yes, Teleport supports tunnel multiplexing on a single port. Set the
tunnel_listen_addr to use the same port as the web_listen_addr address
setting in the proxy_service configuration. Teleport will automatically use
multiplexing with that configuration.
Can I copy files from one Teleport node to another?
Yes, Teleport supports Headless WebAuthn authentication,
which allows you to perform operations like tsh ssh or tsh scp from remote systems where you
are not logged in to Teleport or may not have access to a browser.
I'm getting ssh: subsystem request failed while I try to copy files, what to do?
Make sure that all Teleport components are at least at version 10.3.0. Older versions
don't support the SFTP protocol, and it's enabled by default in tsh v11.0.0 and OpenSSH v9.0.
tsh is very slow on Windows, what to do?
If your host machine is joined to an Active Directory domain, you might find user lookups take a lot longer than you expect. The number of Active Directory accounts that must be scanned to perform a user lookup can cause tsh to hang waiting to get information about the current user. To fix this issue, you can use environment variables to set default account information for your Teleport user. If you are experiencing long lookup times on Windows, do the following:
- Either set the
TELEPORT_USERenvironment variable or set the--userflag to the name of your Teleport user. - Either set the
TELEPORT_LOGINenvironment variable or set the--loginflag to the name of current host user. This setting can be overridden if you open a new SSH session on a machine as a different user. - Set the
TELEPORT_HOMEenvironment variable to be the home directory of your current host user +\.tsh. For example, if your home directory isC:\Users\Me, you'd setTELEPORT_HOMEtoC:\Users\Me\.tsh.
You can set these environment variables globally in Windows so that you don't have to set them every
time you run tsh.
How is Open Source different from Enterprise?
Teleport provides three editions:
- Teleport Enterprise
- Teleport Enterprise Cloud
- Teleport Community Edition
Here is a detailed breakdown of the differences between Teleport's editions.
Access controls
| Community Edition | Enterprise | Cloud | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dual Authorization | ✖ | ✔ | ✔ |
| Hardware Key Support | ✖ | ✔ | ✔ |
| Moderated Sessions | ✖ | ✔ | ✔ |
| Role-Based Access Control | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
| Single Sign-On | GitHub | GitHub, Google Workspace, OIDC, SAML, Teleport | GitHub, Google Workspace, OIDC, SAML, Teleport |
Audit logging and session recording
| Community Edition | Enterprise | Cloud | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Enhanced Session Recording | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
| Recording Proxy Mode | ✔ | ✔ | ✖ |
| Session Recording with Playback | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
| Structured Audit Logs | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
Compliance
| Community Edition | Enterprise | Cloud | |
|---|---|---|---|
| FedRAMP Control | ✖ | ✔ | ✖ |
| FIPS-compliant binaries available for FedRAMP High | ✖ | ✔ | ✖ |
| IP-Based Restrictions | ✖ | ✔ | ✔ |
| PCI DSS Features | Limited | ✔ | ✔ |
| SOC 2 Features | Limited | ✔ | ✔ |
Identity
Available as an add-on to Teleport Enterprise
| Community Edition | Enterprise | Cloud | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Access Lists & Access Reviews | ✖ | ✔ | ✔ |
| Device Trust | ✖ | ✔ | ✔ |
| Endpoint Management: Jamf | ✖ | ✔ | ✔ |
| JIT Access Requests | Limited | ✔ | ✔ |
| Session & Identity Locks | ✖ | ✔ | ✔ |
Infrastructure access
| Community Edition | Enterprise | Cloud | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Agentless Integration with OpenSSH Servers | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
| Application Access | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
| Database Access | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
| Desktop Access | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
| Kubernetes Access | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
| Machine ID | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
| Server Access | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
Audit logging and session recording
| Community Edition | Enterprise | Cloud | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Annual or multi-year contracts, volume discounts | ✖ | ✔ | ✔ |
| Anonymized Usage Tracking | Opt-in | ✔ | ✔ |
| License | Apache 2 | Commercial | Commercial |
Operations
| Community Edition | Enterprise | Cloud | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Auth Service and Proxy Service Management | Self-hosted | Self-hosted | Fully managed |
| Backend support | Any S3-compatible storage for session records, many managed backends for custom audit log storage. | Any S3-compatible storage for session records, many managed backends for custom audit log storage | All data is stored in DynamoDB and S3 with server-side encryption. |
| Data storage location | Can store data anywhere in the world, on most managed cloud backends | Can store data anywhere in the world, on most managed cloud backends | Data is stored in Teleport's AWS infrastructure with audit logs/sessions optionally in customer AWS accounts. Proxy Service instances are deployed across the world for low-latency access. |
| Hardware Security Module support for encryption at rest | ✖ | ✔ | ✖ |
| Proxy Service domain name | Custom | Custom | A subdomain of teleport.sh |
| Version support | All supported releases available to install and download. | All supported releases available to install and download. | Deploys last stable release with 2-3 week lag for stability. |
Support
| Community Edition | Enterprise | Cloud | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Support | Community | 24x7 support with premium SLAs and account managers | 24x7 support with premium SLAs and account managers |
Licensing and usage management
| Open Source | Enterprise | Cloud | Team | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Annual or multi-year contracts, volume discounts | ✖ | ✔ | ✔ | ✖ |
| License | Apache 2 | Commercial | Commercial | Commercial |
| Anonymized Usage Tracking | Opt-in | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
Which version of Teleport is supported?
Teleport releases a new major version approximately every 4 months, and provides security-critical support for the current and two previous major versions. With our typical release cadence, we usually support each major version for 12 months.
Supported versions
Here are the major versions of Teleport and their support windows:
| Release | Release Date | EOL | Minimum tsh version |
|---|---|---|---|
| v14.0 | September 20, 2023 | September 2024 | v13.0.0 |
| v13.0 | May 8, 2023 | May 2024 | v12.0.0 |
| v12.0 | February 6, 2023 | February 2024 | v11.0.0 |
Version compatibility
Teleport uses Semantic Versioning. Version numbers
include a major version, minor version, and patch version, separated by dots.
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 one major version behind, but do not support
clients that are on a newer major version. For example, an 8.x.x Proxy Service
instance is compatible with 7.x.x agents and 7.x.x
tsh, but we don't guarantee that a 9.x.x agent will work with an 8.x.x Proxy Service instance. 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 Service instances and agents do not support Auth Service instances that
are on an older major version, and will fail to connect to older Auth Service
instances by default. You can override version checks by passing
--skip-version-checkwhen starting agents and Proxy Service instances.
Does the Web UI support copy and paste?
Yes. You can copy and paste using a mouse.
What TCP ports does Teleport use?
Please refer to our Networking guide.
Does Teleport support authentication via OIDC, SAML, or Active Directory?
Teleport offers this feature for the Enterprise (Cloud) and Enterprise (Self-Hosted) versions of Teleport.
Why do I see an alert that some agents are out of date?
Teleport monitors the inventory of all cluster components and compares their Teleport versions with the latest release on our GitHub page. If a component is not on the latest release, Teleport will create a cluster alert encouraging users to upgrade.
This check is performed against all cluster components, including the Proxy Service and Auth Service, as well as agents running other Teleport Services.
What is the minimum TLS version that Teleport requires?
Teleport requires a minimum of TLS version 1.2.
This means that when applications and clients establish or accept TLS connections with Teleport processes, they must use TLS 1.2 or a higher protocol version. Teleport enforces this requirement in all operations that involve TLS connections.
Can I suppress warnings about available upgrades?
Yes. The tctl alerts ack command can be used to acknowledge an alert and
temporarily prevent it from being displayed to users. To acknowledge an alert,
you need its ID. You can get a listing of all alerts and their IDs with the
tctl alerts list command.
For detailed information on this family of commands, see the CLI Reference.
Does Teleport send any data back to the cloud?
The open source edition of Teleport does not send any information to our company, and can be used on servers without internet access.
The commercial editions of Teleport can optionally be configured to send anonymized information, depending on the license purchased. This information contains the following:
- Teleport license identifier;
- anonymized cluster name and Teleport auth server host ID;
- for each Teleport user, the anonymized user name and a per-protocol count of interactions - Teleport logins, SSH and Kubernetes exec sessions, Application access web sessions and TCP connections, SSH port forwards, Kubernetes API requests, SFTP actions.
The anonymization is done by passing names and IDs through HMAC-SHA-256, with a HMAC key that's randomly generated when the Teleport cluster is initialized for the first time and is never shared with us; this makes it infeasible for anyone without access to the cluster to deanonymize the data we store.
The code that aggregates and anonymizes this data can be found in our repository on GitHub.
For more details, see the Usage Reporting and Billing guide.
Reach out to [email protected] if you have questions about the commercial
editions of Teleport.
Teleport Connect
When you first start the app, Teleport Connect asks for permission to collect and send telemetry data. This includes tracking events such as:
- Logging in to a cluster
- Starting an SSH, database, or Kubernetes session
- File transfer during an SSH session
- Creating an Access Request
- Reviewing an Access Request
- Assuming an Access Request
On login, we also collect some device-related data:
- Operating system and its version
- App version
- Processor architecture
Additionally, we ask for a job role (answer is optional).
The full list of events and collected data is defined as protocol buffer messages in the Teleport source. We do not track the details of those events but merely that the given event took place. Each event includes the cluster name and user name anonymized with HMAC using the cluster's internal random UUID as the key. It is infeasible to associate this back to a specific cluster or user without access to the cluster's internal datastore.
If you no longer want to send usage data, see disabling telemetry.