Skip to main content
Version: 17.x (unreleased)

Database Access with Vitess (MySQL protocol)

Teleport can provide secure access to Vitess (MySQL) via the Teleport Database Service. This allows for fine-grained access control through the Teleport RBAC system.

The Teleport Database Service proxies traffic from database clients to self-hosted databases in your infrastructure. Teleport maintains a certificate authority for database clients. You configure your database to trust the Teleport database client CA, and the Teleport Database Service presents certificates signed by this CA when proxying user traffic. With this setup, there is no need to store long-lived credentials for self-hosted databases.

Meanwhile, the Teleport Database Service verifies self-hosted databases by checking their TLS certificates against either the Teleport database CA or a custom CA chosen by the user.

In this guide, you will:

  1. Configure your Vitess (MySQL) database for Teleport access.
  2. Add the database to your Teleport cluster.
  3. Connect to the database via Teleport.

How it works​

The Teleport Database Service authenticates to your self-hosted Vitess database using mutual TLS. Vitess trusts the Teleport certificate authority for database clients, and presents a certificate signed by either the Teleport database CA or a custom CA. When a user initiates a database session, the Teleport Database Service presents a certificate signed by Teleport. The authenticated connection then proxies client traffic from the user.

Teleport Database Access Vitess Self-Hosted

note

Accessing Vitess using the gRPC protocol is not currently supported by Teleport.

Prerequisites​

  • A running Teleport cluster version 17.0.0-dev or above. If you want to get started with Teleport, sign up for a free trial or set up a demo environment.

  • The tctl admin tool and tsh client tool.

    Visit Installation for instructions on downloading tctl and tsh.

  • A self-hosted Vitess instance.
  • A host, e.g., an Amazon EC2 instance, where you will run the Teleport Database Service.
  • Optional: a certificate authority that issues certificates for your self-hosted database.
  • To check that you can connect to your Teleport cluster, sign in with tsh login, then verify that you can run tctl commands using your current credentials. For example: 
    $ tsh login --proxy=teleport.example.com [email protected]
    $ tctl status
    # Cluster  teleport.example.com
    # Version  17.0.0-dev
    # CA pin   sha256:abdc1245efgh5678abdc1245efgh5678abdc1245efgh5678abdc1245efgh5678
    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 1/4. Create the Teleport Database Token​

The Database Service requires a valid join token to join your Teleport cluster. Run the following tctl command and save the token output in /tmp/token on the server that will run the Database Service:

$ tctl tokens add --type=db --format=text
abcd123-insecure-do-not-use-this

Step 2/4. Create a certificate/key pair​

Teleport uses mutual TLS authentication with self-hosted databases. These databases must be able to verify certificates presented by the Teleport Database Service. Self-hosted databases also need a certificate/key pair that Teleport can verify.

By default, the Teleport Database Service trusts certificates issued by a certificate authority managed by the Teleport Auth Service. You can either:

  • Configure your self-hosted database to trust this CA, and instruct Teleport to issue a certificate for the database to present to the Teleport Database Service.
  • Configure the Database Service to trust a custom CA.

To configure the database to trust the Teleport CA and issue a certificate for the database, follow these instructions on your workstation:

  1. To use tctl from your workstation, your Teleport user must be allowed to impersonate the system role Db in order to be able to generate the database certificate. Include the following allow rule in in your Teleport user's role:

    allow:
      impersonate:
        users: ["Db"]
        roles: ["Db"]

  2. Export Teleport's certificate authority and a generate certificate/key pair. This example generates a certificate with a 1-year validity period. db.example.com is the hostname where the Teleport Database Service can reach the Vitess server.

    $ tctl auth sign --format=db --host=db.example.com --out=server --ttl=2190h
    TTL

    We recommend using a shorter TTL, but keep mind that you'll need to update the database server certificate before it expires to not lose the ability to connect. Pick the TTL value that best fits your use-case.

    The command creates 3 files: server.cas, server.crt and server.key.

Step 3/4. Configure Vitess​

If you are running your Vitess cluster using a Vitess Operator for Kubernetes, as a first step copy the contents of files server.cas, server.crt and server.key into a secret containing the cluster configuration.

---
apiVersion: v1
kind: Secret
metadata:
  name: example-cluster-config
type: Opaque
stringData:
  server.cas: |
    -----BEGIN CERTIFICATE-----
    MIIDlDCCAnygAwIBAgIQcCge3zdTWnA7isWitaG5yzANBgkqhkiG9w0BAQsFADBk
    ...
    jtOP8B0/0xc=
    -----END CERTIFICATE-----
  server.crt: |
    -----BEGIN CERTIFICATE-----
    MIIDqjCCApKgAwIBAgIRAKq0OQqYIx3pbkSVpIgMooowDQYJKoZIhvcNAQELBQAw
    ...
    aRWuAdb7KYfHgZgC+k5jiFS9MYPbOc3qMK6KwGAU
    -----END CERTIFICATE-----
  server.key: |
    -----BEGIN RSA PRIVATE KEY-----
    MIIEpQIBAAKCAQEAsiejNWoNPPgcjjNZvG0pA+eADXxPyiGf6Or7oiy2ZmkblC4I
    ...
    hr6KW+m+bBx0ABXrJVZ4dfv7ppP173vhavmSG3dvo2D5savAay6L/bE=
    -----END RSA PRIVATE KEY-----

Next, update the gateway configuration:

  • Add a new extraFlags section with a new entry mysql_auth_server_impl: clientcert.
  • Add a new secureTransport section referencing the added files.
cells:
  - name: zone1
    gateway:
      extraFlags:
        mysql_auth_server_impl: clientcert
      secureTransport:
        required: true
        tls:
          clientCACertSecret:
            name: teleport-cluster-config
            key: server.cas
          certSecret:
            name: teleport-cluster-config
            key: server.crt
          keySecret:
            name: teleport-cluster-config
            key: server.key

Create a Teleport user​

tip

To modify an existing user to provide access to the Database Service, see Database Access Controls

Create a local Teleport user with the built-in access role:

$ tctl users add \
  --roles=access \
  --db-users="*" \
  --db-names="*" \
  alice
FlagDescription
--rolesList of roles to assign to the user. The builtin access role allows them to connect to any database server registered with Teleport.
--db-usersList of database usernames the user will be allowed to use when connecting to the databases. A wildcard allows any user.
--db-namesList of logical databases (aka schemas) the user will be allowed to connect to within a database server. A wildcard allows any database.
warning

Database names are only enforced for PostgreSQL, MongoDB, and Cloud Spanner databases.

For more detailed information about database access controls and how to restrict access see RBAC documentation.

Configure and Start the Database Service​

Install and configure Teleport where you will run the Teleport Database Service:

Install Teleport on your Linux server:

  1. Assign edition to one of the following, depending on your Teleport edition:

    EditionValue
    Teleport Enterprise Cloudcloud
    Teleport Enterprise (Self-Hosted)enterprise
    Teleport Community Editionoss

  2. Get the version of Teleport to install. If you have automatic agent updates enabled in your cluster, query the latest Teleport version that is compatible with the updater:

    $ TELEPORT_DOMAIN=example.teleport.com
    $ TELEPORT_VERSION="$(curl https://$TELEPORT_DOMAIN/v1/webapi/automaticupgrades/channel/default/version | sed 's/v//')"

    Otherwise, get the version of your Teleport cluster:

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

  3. Install Teleport on your Linux server:

    $ curl https://cdn.teleport.dev/install-v15.4.11.sh | bash -s ${TELEPORT_VERSION} edition

    The installation script detects the package manager on your Linux server and uses it to install Teleport binaries. To customize your installation, learn about the Teleport package repositories in the installation guide.

On the host where you will run the Teleport Database Service, start Teleport with the appropriate configuration.

Note that a single Teleport process can run multiple different services, for example multiple Database Service agents as well as the SSH Service or Application Service. The step below will overwrite an existing configuration file, so if you're running multiple services add --output=stdout to print the config in your terminal, and manually adjust /etc/teleport.yaml.

Run the following command to generate a configuration file at /etc/teleport.yaml for the Database Service. Update example.teleport.sh to use the host and port of the Teleport Proxy Service:

$ sudo teleport db configure create \
   -o file \
   --token=/tmp/token \
   --proxy=example.teleport.sh \
   --name=example-vitess \
   --protocol=mysql \
   --uri=db.example.com:3306 \
   --labels=env=dev

To configure the Teleport Database Service to trust a custom CA:

  1. Export a CA certificate for the custom CA and make it available at /var/lib/teleport/db.ca on the Teleport Database Service host.

  2. Run a variation of the command above that uses the --ca-cert-file flag. This configures the Teleport Database Service to use the CA certificate at db.ca to verify traffic from the database:

    $ sudo teleport db configure create \
       -o file \
       --token=/tmp/token \
       --proxy=example.teleport.sh:443 \
       --name=example-vitess \
       --protocol=mysql \
       --uri=db.example.com:3306 \
       --ca-cert-file="/var/lib/teleport/db.ca" \
       --labels=env=dev

If your database servers use certificates that are signed by a public CA such as ComodoCA or DigiCert, you can use the trust_system_cert_pool option without exporting the CA:

$ sudo teleport db configure create \
   -o file \
   --token=/tmp/token \
   --proxy=example.teleport.sh:443 \
   --name=example-vitess \
   --protocol=mysql \
   --uri=db.example.com:3306 \
   --trust_system_cert_pool \
   --labels=env=dev

Configure the Teleport Database Service to start automatically when the host boots up by creating a systemd service for it. The instructions depend on how you installed the Teleport Database Service.

On the host where you will run the Teleport Database Service, enable and start Teleport:

$ sudo systemctl enable teleport
$ sudo systemctl start teleport

You can check the status of the Teleport Database Service with systemctl status teleport and view its logs with journalctl -fu teleport.

Tip

A single Teleport process can run multiple services, for example multiple Database Service instances as well as other services such the SSH Service or Application Service.

Step 4/4. Connect​

Once the Database Service has joined the cluster, log in to see the available databases:

$ tsh login --proxy=teleport.example.com --user=alice
$ tsh db ls
# Name           Description    Labels
# -------------- -------------- --------
# example-vitess Example Vitess env=dev

Note that you will only be able to see databases your role has access to. See the RBAC guide for more details.

To retrieve credentials for a database and connect to it:

$ tsh db connect example-vitess

You can optionally specify the database name and the user to use by default when connecting to the database instance:

$ tsh db connect --db-user=root --db-name=mysql example-vitess
Note

The mysql or mariadb command-line client should be available in PATH in order to be able to connect. mariadb is a default command-line client for MySQL and MariaDB.

To log out of the database and remove credentials:

# Remove credentials for a particular database instance.
$ tsh db logout example-vitess
# Remove credentials for all database instances.
$ tsh db logout