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Amazon DynamoDB using the Teleport Application Service

You can configure the Teleport Application Service to enable secure access to Amazon DynamoDB.

This guide will help you to:

  • Install the Teleport Application Service.
  • Set up the Teleport Application Service to access the AWS Console and API.
  • Connect to your DynamoDB databases through the Teleport Application Service.

DynamoDB Self-Hosted

Recommendation: Use the Teleport Database Service

The Teleport Application Service enables secure access to DynamoDB via its integration with the AWS management console and API. This is an alternative to accessing DynamoDB through the Teleport Database service, as described in our Database Access with AWS DynamoDB guide.

The Application Service's integration with AWS is not designed specifically for DynamoDB, while the Database Service has a purpose-built DynamoDB integration. As a result, we recommend using the Database Service to enable secure access to DynamoDB.

It is worth noting that the Database Service will allow you to connect with GUI clients, whereas the Application Service does not. On the other hand, a single Application Service configuration can access DynamoDB across regions, while database resources must be configured for each region with DynamoDB databases.

Prerequisites​

  • AWS account with DynamoDB databases.
  • IAM permissions to create IAM roles.
  • aws Command Line Interface (CLI) tool installed in PATH.
  • A host, e.g., an EC2 instance, where you will run the Teleport Application Service.

  • A running Teleport cluster version 15.4.22 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.

    On Teleport Enterprise, you must use the Enterprise version of tctl, which you can download from your Teleport account workspace. Otherwise, visit Installation for instructions on downloading tctl and tsh for Teleport Community Edition.

  • 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. tctl is supported on macOS and Linux machines. For example: 
    $ tsh login --proxy=teleport.example.com --user=email@example.com
    $ tctl status
    # Cluster  teleport.example.com
    # Version  15.4.22
    # 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.
Not yet a Teleport user?

If you have not yet deployed the Auth Service and Proxy Service, you should follow one of our getting started guides or try our Teleport application access interactive learning track.

We will assume your Teleport cluster is accessible at teleport.example.com and *.teleport.example.com. You can substitute the address of your Teleport Proxy Service. (For Teleport Cloud customers, this will be similar to mytenant.teleport.sh.)

Application Access and DNS

Teleport assigns a subdomain to each application you configure for Application Access. For example, if you enroll Grafana as a resource, Teleport assigns the resource to the grafana.teleport.example.com subdomain.

If you host the Teleport cluster on your own network, you should update your DNS configuration to account for application subdomains. You can update DNS in one of two ways:

  • Create a single DNS address (A) or canonical name (CNAME) record using wildcard substitution for the subdomain name. For example, create a DNS record with the name *.teleport.example.com.
  • Create a separate DNS address (A) or canonical name (CNAME) record for each application subdomain.

Modifying DNS ensures that the certificate authority—for example, Let's Encrypt—can issue a certificate for each subdomain and that clients can verify Teleport hosts regardless of the application they are accessing.

If you use the Teleport cloud platform, no DNS updates are needed because your Teleport cluster automatically provides the subdomains and signed TLS certificates for your applications under your tenant address.

Step 1/5. Create an IAM role for DynamoDB access​

Create an IAM role that provides access to your DynamoDB resources. Teleport Application Service will assume this IAM role on behalf of the Teleport user that accesses these DynamoDB resources.

There are several methods to create an IAM role:

Visit the Roles page of the AWS Console, then press "Create Role".

Select the "AWS account" option, which creates a default trust policy to allow other entities in this account to assume this role:

Create Role Step 1

Press "Next". Find the AWS-managed policy AmazonDynamoDBFullAccess and then select the policy:

Create Role Step 2

Press "Next". Enter role name ExampleTeleportDynamoDBRole and press "Create role":

Create Role Step 3

Apply least-privilege permissions

AmazonDynamoDBFullAccess may provide too much access for your intentions. To use a different IAM policy to reduce permissions, see Managing access permissions to your Amazon DynamoDB Resources for more details.

Step 2/5. Configure the Teleport IAM role mapping​

Give your Teleport users permissions to assume IAM roles in your Teleport cluster.

You can do this by creating a Teleport role with the aws_role_arns field listing the IAM role ARN created in the previous step. Create a file called aws-dynamodb-access.yaml with the following content:

$ cat > aws-dynamodb-access.yaml <<EOF
kind: role
version: v5
metadata:
  name: aws-dynamodb-access
spec:
  allow:
    app_labels:
      '*': '*'
    aws_role_arns:
    - arn:aws:iam::aws-account-id:role/ExampleTeleportDynamoDBRole
EOF

Remember to replace aws-account-id with your AWS Account ID.

Templating "aws_role_arns" in role definitions

The aws_role_arns field supports template variables so they can be populated dynamically based on your users' identity provider attributes. Here are some examples:

Use {{internal.aws_role_arns}} in the role definition:

kind: role
version: v5
metadata:
  name: aws-dynamodb-access
spec:
  allow:
    app_labels:
      '*': '*'
    aws_role_arns: ['{{internal.aws_role_arns}}']

Then specify the IAM roles through user traits:

kind: user
version: v2
metadata:
  name: alice
spec:
  roles: ['aws-dynamodb-access']
  traits:
    aws_role_arns: ['arn:aws:iam:123456789000:role/role_for_alice']
---
kind: user
version: v2
metadata:
  name: bob
spec:
  roles: ['aws-dynamodb-access']
  traits:
    aws_role_arns: ['arn:aws:iam:123456789000:role/role_for_bob']

See Role Templates for details.

Create the new role:

$ tctl create -f aws-dynamodb-access.yaml

Assign the aws-dynamodb-access role to your Teleport user by running the appropriate commands for your authentication provider:

  1. Retrieve your local user's roles as a comma-separated list:

    $ ROLES=$(tsh status -f json | jq -r '.active.roles | join(",")')

  2. Edit your local user to add the new role:

    $ tctl users update $(tsh status -f json | jq -r '.active.username') \
      --set-roles "${ROLES?},aws-dynamodb-access"

  3. Sign out of the Teleport cluster and sign in again to assume the new role.

Step 3/5. Install the Teleport Application Service​

Generate a token​

A join token is required to authorize a Teleport Application Service instance to join the cluster. Generate a short-lived join token and save the output of the command:

$ tctl tokens add \
    --type=app \
    --app-name=aws \
    --app-uri=https://console.aws.amazon.com/console/home

On the host where you will run the Teleport Application Service, copy the token to a file called /tmp/token.

non-standard AWS regions

Replace https://console.aws.amazon.com with https://console.amazonaws-us-gov.com for AWS GovCloud (US) regions or https://console.amazonaws.cn for AWS China regions.

Install and start Teleport​

Install Teleport on the host where you will run the Teleport Application Service. See our Installation page for options besides Linux servers.

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-v15.4.22.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.

Edit the Teleport configuration file (/etc/teleport.yaml) to include the following information, adjusting the value of proxy_server to specify the host and port of your Teleport Proxy Service:

version: v3
teleport:
  join_params:
    token_name: "/tmp/token"
    method: token
  proxy_server: "teleport.example.com:443"
auth_service:
  enabled: off
proxy_service:
  enabled: off
ssh_service:
  enabled: off
app_service:
  enabled: true
  apps:
  - name: aws
    uri: https://console.aws.amazon.com/home/home

Grant the Teleport Application Service access to credentials that it can use to authenticate to AWS. If you are running the Teleport Application Service on an EC2 instance, you may use the EC2 Instance Metadata Service method. Otherwise, you must use environment variables:

Teleport will detect when it is running on an EC2 instance and use the Instance Metadata Service to fetch credentials.

The EC2 instance should be configured to use an EC2 instance profile. For more information, see: Using Instance Profiles.

Have multiple sources of AWS credentials?

Teleport's AWS client loads credentials from different sources in the following order:

  • Environment Variables
  • Shared credentials file
  • Shared configuration file (Teleport always enables shared configuration)
  • EC2 Instance Metadata (credentials only)

While you can provide AWS credentials via a shared credentials file or shared configuration file, you will need to run the Teleport Application Service with the AWS_PROFILE environment variable assigned to the name of your profile of choice.

If you have a specific use case that the instructions above do not account for, consult the documentation for the AWS SDK for Go for a detailed description of credential loading behavior.

Configure the Teleport Application 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 Application Service.

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

$ sudo systemctl enable teleport
$ sudo systemctl start teleport

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

non-standard AWS regions

For non-standard AWS regions such as AWS GovCloud (US) regions and AWS China regions, please set the corresponding region in the AWS_REGION environment variable or in the AWS credentials file so that the Application Service can use the correct STS endpoint.

Step 4/5. Give Teleport permissions to assume roles​

Next, attach the following policy to the IAM role or IAM user the Teleport Application Service instance is using, which allows the Application Service to assume the IAM roles:

{
  "Version": "2012-10-17",
  "Statement": [
    {
      "Effect": "Allow",
      "Action": "sts:AssumeRole",
      "Resource": "*"
    }
  ]
}
tip

You can make the policy more strict by providing specific IAM role resource ARNs in the "Resource" field instead of using a wildcard.

Step 5/5. Connect​

Once the Application Service has started and joined the cluster, you can start connecting to your DynamoDB database.

Using AWS Management Console​

Log in to the Teleport Web UI at https://teleport.example.com (replace with your Proxy Service's public address).

Navigate to the Applications tab in your Teleport cluster's control panel and click on the Launch button for the AWS application. This will bring up an IAM role selector:

IAM role selector

Click on the role ExampleTeleportDynamoDBRole and you will get redirected to the AWS Management Console, signed in with the selected role.

In the console's top-right corner, you should see that you're logged in through federated login and the name of your assumed IAM role is ExampleTeleportDynamoDBRole/<teleport-username> where the session name is your Teleport username.

Using AWS CLI​

Log into the previously configured AWS app on your desktop:

$ tsh apps login --aws-role ExampleTeleportDynamoDBRole aws
Logged into AWS app aws. Example AWS CLI command:

$ tsh aws s3 ls

The --aws-role flag allows you to specify the AWS IAM role to assume when accessing the AWS API. You can either provide a role name like --aws-role ExampleTeleportDynamoDBRole or a full role ARN like arn:aws:iam::123456789000:role/ExampleTeleportDynamoDBRole.

Now you can use the tsh aws command like the native aws command-line tool:

$ tsh aws dynamodb list-tables

To log out of the aws application and remove credentials:

$ tsh apps logout aws

Using other DynamoDB applications​

First, log into the previously configured AWS app if you haven't already done so:

$ tsh apps login --aws-role ExampleTeleportDynamoDBRole aws

To connect your DynamoDB application, you can start either a local HTTPS proxy or a local AWS Service Endpoint proxy.

By default, starting the AWS app proxy creates a local HTTPS proxy server that forwards AWS requests to the Teleport Proxy Service, enabling you to access AWS applications.

Now, use the following command to start the proxy your applications will be connecting to:

$ tsh proxy aws -p 23456
Started AWS proxy on http://127.0.0.1:23456.

Use the following credentials and HTTPS proxy setting to connect to the proxy:
  AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID=abcd1234-this-is-an-example
  AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY=zyxw9876-this-is-an-example
  AWS_CA_BUNDLE=<local-ca-bundle-path>
  HTTPS_PROXY=http://127.0.0.1:23456

Use the displayed AWS credentials and HTTPS proxy settings when configuring your application.

For example, you can assign the AWS credentials and the HTTPS proxy address to environment variables for Python AWS SDK:

$ export AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID=abcd1234-this-is-an-example
$ export AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY=zyxw9876-this-is-an-example
$ export AWS_CA_BUNDLE=<local-ca-bundle-path>
$ export HTTPS_PROXY=http://127.0.0.1:23456
$ python3
>>> import boto3
>>> boto3.client('dynamodb').list_tables()
{'TableNames': ['my-dynamodb-table'], 'ResponseMetadata': {...}}

To log out of the aws application and remove credentials:

$ tsh apps logout aws

Next steps​