title | description | videoBanner | tocDepth |
---|---|---|---|
Run a Self-Hosted Demo Cluster |
This tutorial will guide you through the steps needed to install and run Teleport on a Linux server |
BJWbSqiDLeU |
3 |
See how a self-hosted Teleport deployment works by completing the tutorial below. This shows you how to spin up a single-instance Teleport cluster on a Linux server using Teleport Community Edition. Once you deploy the cluster, you can configure RBAC, register resources, and protect your small-scale demo environments or home lab.
You can also get started right away with a production-ready Teleport cluster by signing up for a free trial of Teleport Enterprise Cloud.
We will run the following Teleport services:
- Teleport Auth Service: The certificate authority for your cluster. It issues certificates and conducts authentication challenges. The Auth Service is typically inaccessible outside your private network.
- Teleport Proxy Service: The cluster frontend, which handles user requests, forwards user credentials to the Auth Service, and communicates with Teleport instances that enable access to specific resources in your infrastructure.
- Teleport SSH Service: An SSH server implementation that takes advantage of Teleport's short-lived certificates, sophisticated RBAC, session recording, and other features.
You will need the following to deploy a demo Teleport cluster. If your environment doesn't meet the prerequisites, you can get started with Teleport by signing up for a free trial of Teleport Enterprise Cloud.
If you want to get a feel for Teleport commands and capabilities without setting up any infrastructure, take a look at the browser-based Teleport Labs.
-
A Linux host with only port
443
open to ingress traffic. You must be able to install and run software on the host. Either configure access to the host via SSH for the initial setup (and open an SSH port in addition port443
) or enter the commands in this guide into an Amazon EC2 user data script, Google Compute Engine startup script, or similar.For a quick demo environment you can use to follow this guide, consider installing our DigitalOcean 1-Click droplet. View the installation page on DigitalOcean Marketplace. Once your droplet is ready, SSH into the droplet and follow the configuration wizard.
-
A multi-factor authenticator app such as Authy, Google Authenticator, or 1Password.
You must also have one of the following:
- A registered domain name.
- An authoritative DNS nameserver managed by your organization, plus an existing certificate authority. If using this approach, ensure that your browser is configured to use your organization's nameserver.
Teleport uses TLS to provide secure access to its Proxy Service and Auth
Service, and this requires a domain name that clients can use to verify
Teleport's certificate. Set up two DNS A
records, each pointing to the IP
address of your Linux host. Assuming teleport.example.com
is your domain name,
set up records for:
Domain | Reason |
---|---|
teleport.example.com |
Traffic to the Proxy Service from users and services. |
*.teleport.example.com |
Traffic to web applications registered with Teleport. Teleport issues a subdomain of your cluster's domain name to each application. |
In this step, you will log into your Linux host, download the Teleport binary, generate a Teleport configuration file, and start the Teleport Auth Service, Proxy Service, and SSH Service on the host.
On your Linux host, run the following command to install the Teleport binary:
$ curl (=teleport.teleport_install_script_url=) | bash -s (=teleport.version=)
Generate a configuration file for Teleport using the teleport configure
command.
This command requires information about a TLS certificate and private key.
(!docs/pages/includes/tls-certificate-setup.mdx!)
(!docs/pages/includes/start-teleport.mdx!)
Access the Teleport Web UI via HTTPS at the domain you created earlier at and accept the terms of using Teleport Community Edition.
You should see a welcome screen similar to the following:
In this step, we'll create a new Teleport user, teleport-admin
, which is
allowed to log into SSH hosts as any of the principals root
, ubuntu
, or
ec2-user
.
On your Linux host, run the following command:
# tctl is an administrative tool that is used to configure Teleport's auth service.
$ sudo tctl users add teleport-admin --roles=editor,access --logins=root,ubuntu,ec2-user
The command prints a message similar to the following:
User "teleport-admin" has been created but requires a password. Share this URL with the user to complete user setup, link is valid for 1h:
https://teleport.example.com:443/web/invite/123abc456def789ghi123abc456def78
NOTE: Make sure teleport.example.com:443 points at a Teleport proxy which users can access.
Visit the provided URL in order to create your Teleport user.
<Admonition type="tip" title="OS User Mappings"
The users that you specify in the logins
flag (e.g., root
, ubuntu
and
ec2-user
in our examples) must exist on your Linux host. Otherwise, you
will get authentication errors later in this tutorial.
If a user does not already exist, you can create it with adduser <login>
or
use host user creation.
If you do not have the permission to create new users on the Linux host, run
tctl users add teleport $(whoami)
to explicitly allow Teleport to
authenticate as the user that you have currently logged in as.
Teleport enforces the use of multi-factor authentication by default. It supports one-time passwords (OTP) and multi-factor authenticators (WebAuthn). In this guide, you will need to enroll an OTP authenticator application using the QR code on the Teleport welcome screen.
In addition to Teleport's Web UI, you can access resources in your
infrastructure via the tsh
client tool.
Install tsh
on your local workstation:
(!docs/pages/includes/install-tsh.mdx!)
Log in to receive short-lived certificates from Teleport. Replace with your Teleport cluster's public address as configured above:
$ tsh login --proxy=<Var name="teleport.example.com" /> --user=teleport-admin
> Profile URL: https://teleport.example.com:443
Logged in as: teleport-admin
Cluster: teleport.example.com
Roles: access, editor
Logins: root, ubuntu, ec2-user
Kubernetes: enabled
Valid until: 2022-04-26 03:04:46 -0400 EDT [valid for 12h0m0s]
Extensions: permit-agent-forwarding, permit-port-forwarding, permit-pty
Once you finish setting up your user, you will see your SSH server in the Teleport Web UI:
With Teleport, you can protect all of the resources in your infrastructure behind a single identity-aware access proxy, including servers, databases, applications, Kubernetes clusters, Windows desktops, and cloud provider APIs.
To enroll a resource with Teleport, visit the Web UI and click Enroll New Resource. The Web UI will show you the steps you can take to enroll your new resource.
Teleport Agents proxy traffic to infrastructure resources like servers, databases, Kubernetes clusters, cloud provider APIs, and Windows desktops.
Step 4 showed you how to install agents manually, and you can also launch agents and enroll resources with them using infrastructure-as-code tools. For example, you can use Terraform to declare a pool of Teleport Agents and configure them to proxy your infrastructure. Read Protect Infrastructure with Teleport to get started.