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Database Access with Self-Hosted MySQL or MariaDB

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Teleport can provide secure access to MySQL or MariaDB 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 (CA) 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 used with the database.

In this guide, you will:

  1. Configure your MySQL or MariaDB 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 MySQL or MariaDB database using mutual TLS. MySQL or MariaDB 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.

Prerequisites​

  • A running Teleport cluster accessible at a hostname with a valid TLS certificate. If you want to get started with Teleport, sign up for a free trial or set up a demo environment.

  • The tctl and tsh clients.

    Installing tctl and tsh clients

    1. Determine the version of your Teleport cluster. The tctl and tsh clients must be at most one major version behind your Teleport cluster version. Send a GET request to the Proxy Service at /v1/webapi/find and use a JSON query tool to obtain your cluster version. Replace teleport.example.com:443 with the web address of your Teleport Proxy Service:

      TELEPORT_DOMAIN=teleport.example.com:443
      TELEPORT_VERSION="$(curl -s https://$TELEPORT_DOMAIN/v1/webapi/find | jq -r '.server_version')"

    2. Follow the instructions for your platform to install tctl and tsh clients:

      Download the signed macOS .pkg installer for Teleport, which includes the tctl and tsh clients:

      curl -O https://cdn.teleport.dev/teleport-${TELEPORT_VERSION?}.pkg

      In Finder double-click the pkg file to begin installation.

      danger

      Using Homebrew to install Teleport is not supported. The Teleport package in Homebrew is not maintained by Teleport and we can't guarantee its reliability or security.

    Connecting with TLS routing disabled

    This guide's commands assume your Teleport cluster uses TLS routing (proxy_listener_mode: multiplex), where the tctl and tsh clients reach every Teleport service through the Proxy Service's web address on port 443. If you're not sure whether this applies to your cluster, check with whoever manages it.

    If your cluster uses separate listener ports instead, adjust ports as follows:

    • tsh commands (e.g., tsh login --proxy=...): continue using the Proxy Service web address on port 3080 (or 443 if behind a load balancer). Do not change these to port 3025.

    • Direct tctl or Auth Service API commands: use port 3025 for the Auth Service gRPC listener:

      tctl status --auth-server=teleport.example.com:3025
  • A self-hosted MySQL or MariaDB instance.
  • Optional: a certificate authority that issues certificates for your self-hosted database.

    • A host, e.g., an Amazon EC2 instance, where you will run the Teleport Database Service, separate from the host(s) running the Teleport Auth Service and Proxy Service.

      Single-node Teleport clusters

      If you run the Database Service as a separate process on the same host as the Proxy Service, the reverse tunnel may fail to connect through the proxy's public address due to NAT hairpinning limitations in some cloud environments (notably GCP and certain on-prem setups). To resolve this, add your proxy domain to /etc/hosts pointing to 127.0.0.1:

      echo "127.0.0.1 teleport.example.com" | sudo tee -a /etc/hosts

      Alternatively, run all Teleport services in a single process (Auth Service, Proxy Service, and Database Service in one teleport.yaml) to avoid the reverse tunnel entirely.

  • Check that you can connect to your Teleport cluster and verify that you can run tctl and tsh commands using your current credentials.

    1. Assign teleport.example.com to the domain name of the Teleport Proxy Service in your cluster and email@example.com to your Teleport username.

    2. Authenticate to your Teleport cluster. This depends on whether your shell is interactive or not.

      In an interactive shell: Run the following command. By default, this triggers a multi-factor authentication prompt:

      tsh login --proxy=teleport.example.com --user=email@example.com
      tctl status
      Cluster  teleport.example.com
      Version  18.10.0
      CA pin   sha256:abdc1245efgh5678abdc1245efgh5678abdc1245efgh5678abdc1245efgh5678

      On non-interactive environments: If you are running tsh and tctl as an AI agent, in a CI/CD environment, or similar, make sure the TELEPORT_IDENTITY_FILE environment variable is assigned to a valid file path with credentials for your cluster. tsh and tctl read the file path from the environment variable and do not require a separate authentication step. If there is no identity file available, we recommend that you set up Machine ID to provision one automatically.

      When executing tctl commands with an identity file, you must pass the --auth-server flag to provide the Teleport Auth Service address, which is not included in the identity file. If you provide the Proxy Service address, tctl connects to the Proxy Service, which forwards traffic to and from the Teleport Auth Service. Update 443 to 3025 if you are contacting the Auth Service directly with tctl:

      tctl status --auth-server=teleport.example.com:443

      For tsh commands that read an identity file, you must pass the --proxy flag, which points tsh to the address of the Teleport Proxy Service:

      tsh status --proxy=teleport.example.com

      Ensure client commands can access your identity file. Replace path/to/identity/file with the path to your identity file:

      export TELEPORT_IDENTITY_FILE="${TELEPORT_IDENTITY_FILE:-path/to/identity/file}"

      Add the --auth-server or --proxy flags to all subsequent tctl and tsh commands.

    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.

Teleport maintains two separate certificate authorities (CAs) for database access: the Database CA (db), which signs certificates that databases present to the Teleport Database Service, and the Database Client CA (db_client), which signs certificates that the Teleport Database Service presents to databases. You can export either CA directly with tctl auth export --type=db or tctl auth export --type=db-client, but in most cases you won't need to: tctl auth sign, described below, retrieves the certificates for you and writes them to local files.

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 your Teleport user's role:

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

  2. Export Teleport's certificate authority and generate a certificate/key pair. This example generates a certificate with a 90-day validity period. db.example.com is the hostname where the Teleport Database Service can reach the MySQL server.

    tctl auth sign --format=db --host=db.example.com --out=server --ttl=2160h
    TTL

    We recommend using a shorter TTL, but keep in 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: The Database Client CA certificate, which your database uses to verify connections from the Teleport Database Service.
    • server.crt: A certificate for your database server, signed by the Database CA.
    • server.key: The private key for the server certificate.

Step 3/4. Configure MySQL/MariaDB​

To configure MySQL to accept TLS connections, add the following to your MySQL configuration file, mysql.cnf:

[mysqld]
require_secure_transport=ON
ssl-ca=/path/to/server.cas
ssl-cert=/path/to/server.crt
ssl-key=/path/to/server.key

Restart the database instance to enable this configuration. Additionally, your MySQL/MariaDB database user accounts must be configured to require a valid client certificate.

Create a new user:

CREATE USER 'alice'@'%' REQUIRE SUBJECT '/CN=alice';

By default, the created user may not have access to anything and won't be able to connect, so let's grant it some permissions:

GRANT ALL ON `%`.* TO 'alice'@'%';
warning

This is an example command that grants database-wide permissions to a user. In a production environment you should follow the principle of least privilege

See Configuring MySQL to Use Encrypted Connections in the MySQL documentation or Enabling TLS on MariaDB Server in the MariaDB documentation for more details.

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:

To install Teleport binaries on your Linux server, the recommended installation method is the cluster install script. It will select the correct version, edition, and installation mode for your cluster.

  1. Remove any existing Teleport binaries on your system:

    sudo rm -f /usr/local/bin/{tsh,teleport,tctl,tbot,fdpass-teleport,teleport-update}

  2. Assign teleport.example.com:443 to your Teleport cluster hostname and port, but not the scheme (https://).

  3. Run your cluster's install script:

    curl "https://teleport.example.com:443/scripts/install.sh" | sudo bash

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:443 \   --name=example-mysql \   --protocol=mysql \   --uri=mysql.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-mysql \   --protocol=mysql \   --uri=mysql.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-mysql \   --protocol=mysql \   --uri=mysql.example.com:3306 \   --trust-system-cert-pool \   --labels=env=dev

Start the Teleport Database Service. The instructions depend on how you installed the Teleport Database Service and whether your system supports systemd:

Configure the Teleport Database Service to start automatically when the host boots up by creating a systemd service for it. 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 as 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-mysql Example MySQL 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 --db-user=alice --db-name=mysql example-mysql
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.

Using identity files

If you are using an identity file (tsh -i identity.pem) instead of interactive tsh login, use tsh proxy db instead of tsh db connect. The tsh db connect command does not work with identity files because it references certificate paths that do not exist on disk.

You must supply --proxy, the database name, and the required --db-user/--db-name flags:

tsh -i identity.pem proxy db --tunnel --proxy=teleport.example.com:443 --db-user=alice --db-name=mysql -p 3307 example-mysql

Then connect your MySQL client to localhost:3307.

tip

To connect to the database using a tool of your choice (for example, a graphical database client), create a local tunnel and configure your client to use it.

tsh proxy db example-mysql --tunnel --db-user=alice --db-name=mysql

See Database GUI Clients guide for more information on specific tools.

Tip

You can also access your MySQL or MariaDB databases using the Web UI.

To log out of the database and remove credentials:

Remove credentials for a particular database instance.
tsh db logout example-mysql
Remove credentials for all database instances.
tsh db logout