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Database Access with Snowflake

Teleport can provide secure access to Snowflake via the Teleport Database Service. This allows for fine-grained access control through Teleport's RBAC.

In this guide, you will:

  1. Configure your Snowflake database with key pair authentication.
  2. Add the database to your Teleport cluster.
  3. Connect to the database via Teleport.

How it works​

The Teleport Database Service communicates with Snowflake using HTTP messages that contain JSON web tokens signed by the Teleport certificate authority for database clients. Snowflake is configured to trust the Teleport database client CA. When a user connects to Snowflake via Teleport, the Database Service forwards the user's requests to Snowflake as Teleport-authenticated messages.

Teleport Database Access Snowflake Self-Hosted

Prerequisites​

  • 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.

  • Snowflake account with SECURITYADMIN role or higher.

  • snowsql installed and added to your system's PATH environment variable.

  • A host where you will run the Teleport Database Service.

    See Installation for details.

  • 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.

Step 1/5. Set up the Teleport Database Service​

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

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-v15.4.22.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.

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.

Generate a configuration file at /etc/teleport.yaml for the Database Service:

$ sudo teleport db configure create \
   -o file \
   --token=/tmp/token \
   --proxy=teleport.example.com:443 \
   --name=example-snowflake \
   --protocol=snowflake \
   --uri=abc12345.snowflakecomputing.com \
   --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 2/5. 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.

Step 3/5. Export a public key​

Use the tctl auth sign command below to export a public key for your Snowflake user:

$ tctl auth sign --format=snowflake --out=server

The command will create a server.pub file with Teleport's public key. Teleport will use the corresponding private key to generate a JWT (JSON Web Token) that will be used to authenticate to Snowflake.

Step 4/5. Add the public key to your Snowflake user​

Use the public key you generated earlier to enable key pair authentication.

Log in to your Snowflake instance and execute the SQL statement below:

alter user alice set rsa_public_key='MIIBIjANBgkqhkiG9w0BAQEFAAOCAQ8AMIIBCgKCAQEAv3dHYw4LJCcZzdbhb3hV...LwIDAQAB';

In this statement, alice is the name of the Snowflake user and the rsa_public_key is the key generated earlier without the PEM header/footer (first and the last line).

You can use the describe user command to verify the user's public key:

desc user alice;

See the Snowflake documentation for more details.

Step 5/5. Connect​

Log in to your Teleport cluster and see the available databases:

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

To retrieve credentials for a database and connect to it:

$ tsh db connect --db-user=alice --db-name=SNOWFLAKE_SAMPLE_DATA example-snowflake

The snowsql command-line client should be available in the system PATH in order to be able to connect.

To log out of the database and remove credentials:

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

Next steps​

  • Take a look at the YAML configuration reference.