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Database Access with Redis

If you want to configure Redis Cluster, please read Database Access with Redis Cluster.

Teleport can provide secure access to Redis 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 Redis 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 Redis database using mutual TLS. Redis 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 Redis 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.

  • Redis version 6.0 or newer.

    Note

    RESP3 (REdis Serialization Protocol) is currently not supported.

  • redis-cli version 6.2 or newer installed and added to your system's PATH environment variable.

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

    See Installation for details.

  • 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. 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.

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-redis \
   --protocol=redis \
   --uri=rediss://redis.example.com:6379 \
   --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-redis \
       --protocol=redis \
       --uri=rediss://redis.example.com:6379 \
       --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-redis \
   --protocol=redis \
   --uri=rediss://redis.example.com:6379 \
   --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 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. Create Redis users​

Each Redis user must be protected by a strong password. We recommend using OpenSSL to generate passwords:

openssl rand -hex 32
note

If you have access to Redis you can also generate a password by using the below command from the Redis console:

ACL GENPASS

Create a users.acl file, which defines users for your Redis deployment, passwords required to log in as a given user, and sets of ACL rules. Redis allows you to provide passwords in plaintext or an SHA256 hash. We strongly recommend using an SHA256 hash instead of plaintext passwords.

You can use the command below to generate an SHA256 hash from a password.

echo -n STRONG_GENERATED_PASSWORD | sha256sum
user alice on #57639ed88a85996453555f22f5aa4147b4c9614056585d931e5d976f610651e9 allcommands allkeys
user default off

For more ACL examples refer to the Redis documentation.

warning

It's very important to either disable or protect with a password the default user. Otherwise, everyone with access to the database can log in as the default user, which by default has administrator privileges.

Step 4/5. Set up mutual TLS​

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 Redis server.

    $ tctl auth sign --format=redis --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.

You will need these files to enable mutual TLS on your Redis server.

Use the generated secrets to enable mutual TLS in your redis.conf configuration file and restart the database:

tls-port 6379
port 0
aclfile /path/to/users.acl
tls-ca-cert-file /path/to/server.cas
tls-cert-file /path/to/server.crt
tls-key-file /path/to/server.key
tls-protocols "TLSv1.2 TLSv1.3"

Once mutual TLS has been enabled, you will no longer be able to connect to the cluster without providing a valid client certificate. You can use the tls-auth-clients optional setting to allow connections from clients that do not present a certificate.

See TLS Support in the Redis documentation for more details.

Step 5/5. Connect​

Log into your Teleport cluster and see available databases:

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

To connect to a particular database instance:

$ tsh db connect example-redis

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

$ tsh db connect --db-user=alice example-redis

If flag --db-user is not provided, Teleport logs in as the default user.

Now you can log in as the previously created user using the below command:

AUTH alice STRONG_GENERATED_PASSWORD

To log out of the database and remove credentials:

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

Supported Redis commands​

Redis in standalone mode doesn't support the commands below. If one of the listed commands is called Teleport returns the ERR Teleport: not supported by Teleport error.

  • HELLO
  • PUNSUBSCRIBE
  • SSUBSCRIBE
  • SUNSUBSCRIBE

Next steps​

  • Take a look at the YAML configuration reference.