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Database Access with AlloyDB

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

In this guide, you will:

  1. Configure your AlloyDB database with a service account.
  2. Add the database to your Teleport cluster.
  3. Connect to the database via Teleport.

How it works​

The Teleport Database Service uses IAM authentication to communicate with AlloyDB. When a user connects to the database via Teleport, the Teleport Database Service obtains Google Cloud credentials and authenticates to Google Cloud as an IAM principal with permissions to access the database.

Prerequisites​

  • A running Teleport cluster. 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.

  • Google Cloud account with an AlloyDB cluster and instance deployed, configured for IAM database authentication.
  • psql installed and in your system PATH.
  • A host (e.g., a Compute Engine instance) to run the Teleport Database Service.
  • 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, run the following command, assigning teleport.example.com to the domain name of the Teleport Proxy Service in your cluster and email@example.com to your Teleport username: 
    tsh login --proxy=teleport.example.com --user=email@example.com
    tctl status
    Cluster  teleport.example.com
    Version  19.0.0-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: Configure GCP IAM and database user​

You need two service accounts:

  • teleport-db-service: used by the Teleport Database Service to access AlloyDB metadata and generate tokens.
  • alloydb-user: used by end-users to authenticate to the database.

Create the Database Service account​

Go to Service Accounts and create a service account named teleport-db-service. Assign the predefined roles/alloydb.client role.

Create the database user account​

note

If you already have a GCP service account for database access with the required roles, you can use it instead.

Go to Service Accounts and create a service account named alloydb-user. Assign these roles:

Then, on the alloydb-user overview page, go to the "Principals with Access" tab, click "Grant Access", and add teleport-db-service with the Service Account Token Creator role.

Add the IAM database user to AlloyDB​

note

Skip this if your AlloyDB instance already has an IAM user for this service account.

Ensure IAM authentication is enabled on your instance (the alloydb.iam_authentication flag must be set). Go to the Users page of your AlloyDB instance, click "Add User Account", choose "Cloud IAM" authentication, and add alloydb-user.

Step 2/4: Set up the Database Service host​

note

If you already have a host running the Teleport Database Service with the teleport-db-service credentials, skip to Step 3.

Create a GCE instance and attach the teleport-db-service service account in the "Identity and API access" section.

Attaching the service account to an existing GCE instance
  1. Navigate to VM instances and open your instance.
  2. Stop the instance.
  3. Edit the instance, find Service account under Identity and API access, and select teleport-db-service.
  4. Save and restart.

If running on a non-GCE host, use workload identity federation to provide credentials.

Using service account keys (not recommended for production)

Create a JSON key for the teleport-db-service account and set the environment variable:

echo 'GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS=/path/to/credentials.json' | \sudo tee -a /etc/default/teleport

warning

Service account keys are a security risk. Use workload identity or attached service accounts in production. See Google Cloud authentication docs for details.

Step 3/4: Configure and start Teleport​

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

  2. Run your cluster's install script:

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

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

Replace teleport.example.com:443 with your Teleport Proxy address and connection-uri with your AlloyDB connection URI (format: projects/PROJECT/locations/REGION/clusters/CLUSTER/instances/INSTANCE, found on the instance details page).

sudo teleport db configure create \   -o file \   --name=alloydb \   --protocol=postgres \   --labels=env=dev \   --token=/tmp/token \   --proxy=teleport.example.com:443  \   --uri=alloydb://connection-uri

Endpoint type

By default, Teleport uses the private AlloyDB endpoint. To use public or PSC endpoints, set endpoint_type in the config:

db_service:
  resources:
    - name: alloydb
      protocol: postgres
      uri: alloydb://projects/PROJECT/locations/REGION/clusters/CLUSTER/instances/INSTANCE
      gcp:
        alloydb:
          endpoint_type: public  # private | public | psc
Using a dynamic resource instead

Create alloydb.yaml:

kind: db
version: v3
metadata:
  name: alloydb-dynamic
  labels:
    env: dev
spec:
  protocol: "postgres"
  uri: "alloydb://connection-uri"
  gcp:
    alloydb:
      endpoint_type: private

Apply it:

tctl create -f alloydb.yaml

Start the Database Service:

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.

Step 4/4: Connect​

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.

Log in and list databases:

tsh login --proxy=teleport.example.com --user=alice
tsh db ls
Name    Description Labels
------- ----------- -------
alloydb GCP AlloyDB env=dev

Connect using the service account name (minus .gserviceaccount.com):

tsh db connect --db-user=alloydb-user@project-id.iam --db-name=postgres alloydb

tip

From version 17.1, you can also connect via the Web UI.

To log out:

tsh db logout alloydb
Or for all databases:
tsh db logout

Optional: least-privilege IAM roles​

For tighter security, replace the predefined roles with custom roles containing only the required permissions.

For teleport-db-service:

  • alloydb.clusters.generateClientCertificate
  • alloydb.instances.connect
  • iam.serviceAccounts.getAccessToken (replaces the broader "Service Account Token Creator" role)

For alloydb-user:

  • alloydb.instances.connect
  • alloydb.users.login
  • serviceusage.services.use

Troubleshooting​

Could not find default credentials​

This error can come from either your client application or Teleport.

For a client application, ensure that you disable GCP credential loading. Your client should not attempt to load credentials because GCP credentials will be provided by the Teleport Database Service.

If you see the credentials error message in the Teleport Database Service logs (at DEBUG log level), then the Teleport Database Service does not have GCP credentials configured correctly.

If you are using a service account key, then ensure that the environment variable GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS=/path/to/credentials.json is set and restart your Teleport Database Service to ensure that the env var is available to teleport. For example, if your Teleport Database Service runs as a systemd service:

echo 'GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS=/path/to/credentials.json' | sudo tee -a /etc/default/teleport
sudo systemctl restart teleport

See authentication in the Google Cloud documentation for more information about service account authentication methods.

Unable to cancel a query​

If you use a PostgreSQL cli client like psql, and you try to cancel a query with Ctrl+C, but it doesn't cancel the query, then you need to connect using a tsh local proxy instead. When psql cancels a query, it establishes a new connection without TLS certificates, however Teleport requires TLS certificates not only for authentication, but also to route database connections.

If you enable TLS Routing in Teleport then tsh db connect will automatically start a local proxy for every connection. Alternatively, you can connect via Teleport Connect which also uses a local proxy. Otherwise, you need to start a tsh local proxy manually using tsh proxy db and connect via the local proxy.

If you have already started a long-running query in a psql session that you cannot cancel with Ctrl+C, you can start a new client session to cancel that query manually:

First, find the query's process identifier (PID):

SELECT pid,usename,backend_start,query FROM pg_stat_activity WHERE state = 'active';

Next, gracefully cancel the query using its PID. This will send a SIGINT signal to the postgres backend process for that query:

SELECT pg_cancel_backend(<PID>);

You should always try to gracefully terminate a query first, but if graceful cancellation is taking too long, then you can forcefully terminate the query instead. This will send a SIGTERM signal to the postgres backend process for that query:

SELECT pg_terminate_backend(<PID>);

See the PostgreSQL documentation on admin functions for more information about the pg_cancel_backend and pg_terminate_backend functions.

SSL SYSCALL error​

You may encounter the following error when your local psql is not compatible with newer versions of OpenSSL:

tsh db connect --db-user postgres --db-name postgres postgres
psql: error: connection to server at "localhost" (::1), port 12345 failed: Connection refused    Is the server running on that host and accepting TCP/IP connections?connection to server at "localhost" (127.0.0.1), port 12345 failed: SSL SYSCALL error: Undefined error: 0

Please upgrade your local psql to the latest version.

Next steps​

  • Take a look at the YAML configuration reference.