Running an HA Teleport cluster using Microsoft Azure, AKS, and Helm
In this guide, we'll go through how to set up a High Availability Teleport cluster with multiple replicas in Kubernetes using Teleport Helm charts and Microsoft Azure managed services (Kubernetes Services, Database for PostgreSQL, Blob Storage).
If you are already running Teleport on another platform, you can use your existing Teleport deployment to access your Kubernetes cluster. Follow our guide to connect your Kubernetes cluster to Teleport.
Teleport Enterprise Cloud takes care of this setup for you so you can provide secure access to your infrastructure right away.
Get started with a free trial of Teleport Enterprise Cloud.
Prerequisites
- Kubernetes >= v1.17.0
- Helm >= v3.4.2
Teleport's charts require the use of Helm version 3. You can install Helm 3 by following these instructions.
Throughout this guide, we will assume that you have the helm
and kubectl
binaries available in your PATH
:
$ 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+"}
Best practices for production security
When running Teleport in production, you should adhere to the following best practices to avoid security incidents:
- Avoid using
sudo
in production environments unless it's necessary. - Create new, non-root, users and use test instances for experimenting with Teleport.
- Run Teleport's services as a non-root user unless required. Only the SSH
Service requires root access. Note that you will need root permissions (or
the
CAP_NET_BIND_SERVICE
capability) to make Teleport listen on a port numbered <1024
(e.g.443
). - Follow the principle of least privilege. Don't give users
permissive roles when more a restrictive role will do.
For example, don't assign users the built-in
access,editor
roles, which give them permissions to access and edit all cluster resources. Instead, define roles with the minimum required permissions for each user and configure access requests to provide temporary elevated permissions. - When you enroll Teleport resources—for example, new databases or applications—you
should save the invitation token to a file.
If you enter the token directly on the command line, a malicious user could view
it by running the
history
command on a compromised system.
You should note that these practices aren't necessarily reflected in the examples used in documentation. Examples in the documentation are primarily intended for demonstration and for development environments.
In addition, you will need azure-cli
2.51 or later to follow along these
instructions. Reference the Azure docs on how to install the Azure
CLI.
After installing it, make sure you are logged in by typing az login
. This
guide assumes that your user has permissions to create Azure Database for
PostgreSQL instances, Azure Blob Storage accounts, and Managed Identities, and
has the ability to add role assignments for those. You will also need an Azure
DNS zone, and access to an AKS cluster with cert-manager
installed and configured to issue
certificates for said Azure DNS
zone.
In this guide we'll use workload identity to authenticate Teleport to PostgreSQL and Blob Storage, so you'll need to enable workload identity and the OIDC issuer in your AKS cluster if they're not enabled already:
$ az aks update --resource-group aks-rg --name aks-name --enable-oidc-issuer --enable-workload-identity
Step 1/5. Add the Teleport Helm chart repository
Set up the Teleport Helm repository.
Allow Helm to install charts that are hosted in the Teleport Helm repository:
$ helm repo add teleport https://charts.releases.teleport.dev
Update the cache of charts from the remote repository so you can upgrade to all available releases:
$ helm repo update
Step 2/5. Set up PostgreSQL and Blob Storage
For convenience, we'll create all the resources necessary in a brand new resource group; if you want to use an existing one, you can skip this step.
$ az group create --name teleport-rg --location region
We're going to need a Managed Identity for Teleport to use these services.
$ az identity create --resource-group teleport-rg --name teleport-id
The recommended HA deployment of Teleport on Azure stores the cluster state and the audit log entries in a PostgreSQL instance. In this guide we'll create a publicly accessible one, but you can restrict it to your AKS cluster's IP address, or you can create it attached to the same virtual network that the cluster is using, instead.
Depending on your region, you might be able to use ZoneRedundant
high
availability, or you might have to use SameZone
high availability.
$ az postgres flexible-server create --resource-group teleport-rg --name teleport-pg \
--active-directory-auth Enabled --password-auth Disabled \
--version 15 --high-availability SameZone --public-access All
$ az postgres flexible-server parameter set --resource-group teleport-rg --name teleport-pg \
--name wal_level --value logical
$ az postgres flexible-server restart --resource-group teleport-rg --name teleport-pg
$ az postgres flexible-server ad-admin create --resource-group teleport-rg --server-name teleport-pg \
--display-name pguser --type ServicePrincipal \
--object-id "$(az identity show --resource-group teleport-rg --name teleport-id --query principalId -o tsv)"
Teleport will store session recordings in a Blob Storage account. Optionally, access can be restricted to just the AKS outbound address, or the account can be made part of the virtual network that the AKS cluster is using.
$ az storage account create --resource-group teleport-rg --name teleport-blob \
--allow-blob-public-access false
$ az role assignment create --role "Storage Blob Data Owner" --assignee-principal-type ServicePrincipal \
--assignee-object-id "$(az identity show --resource-group teleport-rg --name teleport-id --query principalId -o tsv)" \
--scope "$(az storage account show --resource-group teleport-rg --name teleportblob --query id -o tsv)""
We'll use Workload Identity to authenticate to those services, so we'll add federated credentials for the Teleport service account used by the Auth Service.
$ az identity federated-credential create --resource-group teleport-rg --identity-name teleport-id \
--name aks --audience api://AzureADTokenExchange \
--subject system:serviceaccount:teleport-ns:teleport-release \
--issuer "$(az aks show --resource-group aks-rg --name aks-name --query oidcIssuerProfile.issuerUrl -o tsv)"
Step 3/5. Set values to configure the cluster
License Secret
Before you can install Teleport Enterprise in your Kubernetes cluster, you will need to create a secret that contains your Teleport license information.
The Teleport Auth Service reads a license file to authenticate your Teleport Enterprise account.
To obtain your license file, navigate to your Teleport account dashboard and log in. You can start at teleport.sh and enter your Teleport account name (e.g. my-company). After logging in you will see a "GENERATE LICENSE KEY" button, which will generate a new license file and allow you to download it.
Create a secret from your license file. Teleport will automatically discover
this secret as long as your file is named license.pem
.
$ kubectl create namespace teleport-ns
$ kubectl -n teleport-ns create secret generic license --from-file=license.pem
Now we'll configure the teleport-cluster
Helm chart to use the azure
mode.
First get the client ID for the teleport-id
identity:
$ az identity show --resource-group teleport-rg --name teleport-id --query clientId -o tsv
teleport-client-id-uuid-123456789012
Then create a file called azure-values.yaml
containing the values you've selected above:
- Open Source
- Enterprise
chartMode: azure
# Name of your cluster. Use the FQDN you intend to configure in DNS later
clusterName: teleport.example.com
azure:
databaseHost: "teleport-pg.postgres.database.azure.com"
databaseUser: "pguser"
sessionRecordingStorageAccount: "teleportblob.blob.core.windows.net"
# Whether to mirror audit log entries to stdout in JSON format (useful for external log collectors)
auditLogMirrorOnStdout: false
clientID: "teleport-client-id-uuid-123456789012"
highAvailability:
# Number of replicas to configure
replicaCount: 2
certManager:
# Enable cert-manager support to get TLS certificates
enabled: true
# Name of the cert-manager GlobalIssuer or Issuer to use
issuerName: letsencrypt-production
issuerKind: ClusterIssuer
# If you are running Kubernetes 1.23 or above, disable PodSecurityPolicies
podSecurityPolicy:
enabled: false
chartMode: azure
# Name of your cluster. Use the FQDN you intend to configure in DNS later
clusterName: teleport.example.com
azure:
databaseHost: "teleport-pg.postgres.database.azure.com"
databaseUser: "pguser"
sessionRecordingStorageAccount: "teleportblob.blob.core.windows.net"
# Whether to mirror audit log entries to stdout in JSON format (useful for external log collectors)
auditLogMirrorOnStdout: false
clientID: "teleport-client-id-uuid-123456789012"
highAvailability:
# Number of replicas to configure
replicaCount: 2
certManager:
# Enable cert-manager support to get TLS certificates
enabled: true
# Name of the cert-manager GlobalIssuer or Issuer to use
issuerName: letsencrypt-production
issuerKind: ClusterIssuer
# If you are running Kubernetes 1.23 or above, disable PodSecurityPolicies
podSecurityPolicy:
enabled: false
# Indicate that this is a Teleport Enterprise deployment
enterprise: true
Install the chart with the values from your azure-values.yaml
file using this command:
$ helm install teleport-release teleport/teleport-cluster \
--create-namespace --namespace teleport-ns \
--values azure-values.yaml
You cannot change the clusterName
after the cluster is configured, so make sure you choose wisely. We recommend using the fully-qualified domain name that you'll use for external access to your Teleport cluster.
Once the chart is installed, you can use kubectl
commands to view the deployment:
$ kubectl --namespace teleport-ns get all
NAME READY STATUS RESTARTS AGE
pod/teleport-auth-57989d4cb-4q2ds 1/1 Running 0 22h
pod/teleport-auth-57989d4cb-rtrzn 1/1 Running 0 22h
pod/teleport-proxy-c6bf55cfc-w96d2 1/1 Running 0 22h
pod/teleport-proxy-c6bf55cfc-z256w 1/1 Running 0 22h
NAME TYPE CLUSTER-IP EXTERNAL-IP PORT(S) AGE
service/teleport LoadBalancer 10.40.11.180 34.138.177.11 443:30258/TCP,3023:31802/TCP,3026:32182/TCP,3024:30101/TCP,3036:30302/TCP 22h
service/teleport-auth ClusterIP 10.40.8.251 <none> 3025/TCP,3026/TCP 22h
service/teleport-auth-v13 ClusterIP None <none> <none> 22h
service/teleport-auth-v14 ClusterIP None <none> <none> 22h
NAME READY UP-TO-DATE AVAILABLE AGE
deployment.apps/teleport-auth 2/2 2 2 22h
deployment.apps/teleport-proxy 2/2 2 2 22h
NAME DESIRED CURRENT READY AGE
replicaset.apps/teleport-auth-57989d4cb 2 2 2 22h
replicaset.apps/teleport-proxy-c6bf55cfc 2 2 2 22h
Step 4/5. Set up DNS
We'll now set up DNS A
records for teleport.example.com
and
*.teleport.example.com
, using your Azure DNS zone rooted at example.com
. If
you're using a different DNS hosting service, follow their instructions instead.
$ PREFIX=teleport
$ ZONE=example.com
$ ZONE_RG=dns-rg
$ external_ip="$(kubectl --namespace teleport-ns get service/teleport-release -o jsonpath='{.status.loadBalancer.ingress[*].ip}')"
$ az network dns record-set a add-record --resource-group ${ZONE_RG} --zone-name ${ZONE} --record-set-name ${PREFIX} --ipv4-address "${external_ip}"
$ az network dns record-set a add-record --resource-group ${ZONE_RG} --zone-name ${ZONE} --record-set-name "*.${PREFIX}" --ipv4-address "${external_ip}"
Step 5/5. Create a Teleport user
Create a user to be able to log into Teleport. This needs to be done on the Teleport auth server,
so we can run the command using kubectl
:
- Open Source
- Enterprise
$ kubectl --namespace teleport-ns exec deploy/teleport-release-auth -- tctl users add test --roles=access,editor
User "test" has been created but requires a password. Share this URL with the user to complete user setup, link is valid for 1h:
https://teleport.example.com:443/web/invite/91cfbd08bc89122275006e48b516cc68
NOTE: Make sure teleport.example.com:443 points at a Teleport proxy that users can access.
$ kubectl --namespace teleport-ns exec deploy/teleport-release-auth -- tctl users add test --roles=access,editor,reviewer
User "test" has been created but requires a password. Share this URL with the user to complete user setup, link is valid for 1h:
https://teleport.example.com:443/web/invite/91cfbd08bc89122275006e48b516cc68
NOTE: Make sure teleport.example.com:443 points at a Teleport proxy that users can access.
Load the user creation link to create a password and set up multi-factor authentication for the Teleport user via the web UI.
High Availability
In this guide, we have configured 2 replicas. This can be changed after cluster creation by altering the highAvailability.replicaCount
value using helm upgrade
as detailed below.
Upgrading the cluster after deployment
To make changes to your Teleport cluster after deployment, you can use helm upgrade
.
Helm defaults to using the latest version of the chart available in the repo, which will also correspond to the latest
version of Teleport. You can make sure that the repo is up to date by running helm repo update
.
If you want to use a different version of Teleport, pass the --version
argument to Helm:
$ helm upgrade --version 14.0.0 \
teleport-release teleport/teleport-cluster \
--namespace teleport-ns \
-f azure-values.yaml
Here's an example where we set the chart to use 3 replicas:
- Using values.yaml
- Using --set via CLI
Edit your azure-values.yaml
file from above and make the appropriate changes.
Upgrade the deployment with the values from your azure-values.yaml
file using this command:
$ helm upgrade teleport-release teleport/teleport-cluster \
--namespace teleport-ns \
-f azure-values.yaml
Run this command, editing your command line parameters as appropriate:
$ helm upgrade teleport-release teleport/teleport-cluster \
--namespace teleport-ns \
--set highAvailability.replicaCount=3
To change chartMode
, clusterName
or any azure
settings, you must first uninstall the existing chart and then install
a new version with the appropriate values.
Uninstalling Teleport
To uninstall the teleport-cluster
chart, use helm uninstall
. For example:
$ helm --namespace teleport-ns uninstall teleport-release
Next steps
Now that you have deployed a Teleport cluster, read the Manage Access section to get started enrolling users and setting up RBAC.
See the high availability section of our Helm chart reference for more details on high availability.