Running Teleport on GCP

We've created this guide to give customers an overview of how to deploy a self-hosted Teleport cluster on Google Cloud (GCP). This guide provides a high-level introduction to setting up and running Teleport in production.

We have split this guide into:

• GCP Teleport Introduction
• GCP Quickstart

GCP Teleport Introduction

This guide will cover how to set up, configure and run Teleport on GCP.

The following GCP Services are required to run Teleport in high availability mode:

• Compute Engine: VM Instances with Instance Groups
• Compute Engine: Health Checks
• Storage: Cloud Firestore
• Storage: Google Cloud Storage
• Network Services: Load Balancing
• Network Services: Cloud DNS

Other things needed:

• SSL Certificate

Optional:

• Management Tools: Cloud Deployment Manager
• Logging: Stackdriver

We recommend setting up Teleport in high availability mode. In high availability mode Firestore is used for cluster state and audit logs, and Google Cloud Storage is used for session recordings.

Throughout this guide, we'll make use of the following placeholder variables. Please replace them with values appropriate for your environment.

Compute Engine: VM Instances with Instance Groups

We recommend using n1-standard-2 instances in production. It's best to separate Teleport's Proxy Servers and Auth Servers using instance groups for each.

Compute Engine: Health Checks

GCP relies heavily on Health Checks, this is helpful when adding new instances to an instance group.

To enable health checks in Teleport start with teleport start --diag-addr=0.0.0.0:3000 see Admin Guide: Troubleshooting for more information.

Storage: Cloud Firestore

The Firestore backend uses real-time updates to keep individual Auth Servers in sync, and requires Firestore configured in native mode.

To configure Teleport to store audit events in Firestore, add the following to the teleport section of your Auth Server's config file (by default it's /etc/teleport.yaml):

teleport:
  storage:
    type: firestore
    collection_name: Example_FIRESTORE_CLUSTER_STATE
    project_id: Example_GCP_PROJECT
    credentials_path: Example_GCP_CREDENTIALS
    audit_events_uri: [ 'firestore://Example_FIRESTORE_AUDIT_LOGS?projectID=Example_GCP_PROJECT&credentialsPath=Example_GCP_CREDENTIALS' ]

Storage: Google Cloud Storage

The Google Cloud Storage backend is used for Teleport session recordings. Teleport will try to create the bucket on startup if it doesn't already exist. If you prefer, you can create the bucket ahead of time. In this case, Teleport does not need permissions to create buckets.

When creating the Bucket, we recommend setting it up as Dual-region with the Standard storage class. Provide access using a Uniform access control with a Google-managed key.

When setting up audit_sessions_uri use the gs:// prefix.

storage:
    ...
    audit_sessions_uri: 'gs://Example_BUCKET_NAME?projectID=Example_GCP_PROJECT&credentialsPath=Example_GCP_CREDENTIALS'
    ...

Network Services: Load Balancing

Load Balancing is required for Proxy and SSH traffic. Use TCP Load Balancing as Teleport requires custom ports for SSH and Web Traffic.

Network Services: Cloud DNS

Cloud DNS is used to set up the public URL of the Teleport Proxy.

Access: Service accounts

The Teleport Auth Server will need to read and write to Firestore and Google Cloud Storage. For this you will need a Service Account with the correct permissions.

If you want Teleport to be able to create its own GCS bucket, you'll need to create a role allowing the storage.buckets.create permission. You can skip this step if you choose to create the bucket before installing Teleport.

To create this role, start by defining the role in a YAML file:

# teleport_auth_role.yaml
title: teleport_auth_role
description: 'Teleport permissions for GCP'
stage: ALPHA
includedPermissions:
# Allow Teleport to create the GCS bucket for session
# recordings if it doesn't already exist.
- storage.buckets.create

Create the role using this file:

gcloud iam roles create teleport_auth_role \    --project Example_GCP_PROJECT \    --file teleport_auth_role.yaml \    --format yaml

Note the name field in the output which is the fully qualified name for the custom role and must be used in later steps.

export IAM_ROLE=<role name output from above>

If you don't already have a GCP service account for your Teleport Auth Server you can create one with the following command, otherwise use your existing service account.

gcloud iam service-accounts create teleport-auth-server \    --description="Service account for Teleport Auth Server" \    --display-name="Teleport Auth Server" \    --format=yaml

Note the email field in the output, this must be used as the identifier for the service account.

export SERVICE_ACCOUNT=<email output from above command>

Lastly, bind the required IAM roles to your newly created service account.

our custom IAM role allows Teleport to create the GCS
bucket for session recordings if it doesn't already exist
gcloud projects add-iam-policy-binding Example_GCP_PROJECT \    --member=serviceAccount:$SERVICE_ACCOUNT \    --role=$IAM_ROLE

datastore.owner grants the required Firestore access
gcloud projects add-iam-policy-binding Example_GCP_PROJECT \    --member=serviceAccount:$SERVICE_ACCOUNT \    --role=roles/datastore.owner

storage.objectAdmin is needed to read/write/delete storage objects
gcloud projects add-iam-policy-binding Example_GCP_PROJECT \    --member=serviceAccount:$SERVICE_ACCOUNT \    --role=roles/storage.objectAdmin

Download JSON Service Key

The credentials for this service account should be exported in JSON format and provided to Teleport throughout the remainder of this guide.

GCP Quickstart

1. Create Resources

We recommend starting by creating the resources. We highly recommend creating these an infrastructure automation tool such as Cloud Deployment Manager or Terraform.

2. Install & Configure Teleport

Follow install instructions from our installation page.

We recommend configuring Teleport as per the below steps:

• Open Source
• Enterprise

1. Configure Teleport Auth Server using the below example teleport.yaml,and start it using systemd. The DEB/RPM installations will automatically include the systemd configuration.

#
# Sample Teleport configuration teleport.yaml file for Auth Server
#
teleport:
  nodename: teleport-auth-server
  data_dir: /var/lib/teleport
  pid_file: /run/teleport.pid
  connection_limits:
    max_connections: 15000
    max_users: 250
  log:
    output: stderr
    severity: DEBUG
  storage:
    type: firestore
    collection_name: Example_FIRESTORE_CLUSTER_STATE
    # Credentials: Path to google service account file, used for Firestore and Google Storage.
    credentials_path: Example_GCP_CREDENTIALS
    project_id: Example_GCP_PROJECT
    audit_events_uri: 'firestore://Example_FIRESTORE_AUDIT_LOGS?projectID=Example_GCP_PROJECT&credentialsPath=Example_GCP_CREDENTIALS'
    audit_sessions_uri: 'gs://Example_BUCKET_NAME?projectID=Example_GCP_PROJECT&credentialsPath=Example_GCP_CREDENTIALS'
auth_service:
  enabled: true
  tokens:
    - "proxy:abcd123-insecure-do-not-use-this"
    - "node:efgh456-insecure-do-not-use-this"
proxy_service:
  enabled: false
ssh_service:
  enabled: false

1. Configure Teleport Auth Server using the below example teleport.yaml, and start it using systemd. The DEB/RPM installations will automatically include the systemd configuration.

#
# Sample Teleport configuration teleport.yaml file for Auth Server
#
teleport:
  nodename: teleport-auth-server
  data_dir: /var/lib/teleport
  pid_file: /run/teleport.pid
  connection_limits:
    max_connections: 15000
    max_users: 250
  log:
    output: stderr
    severity: DEBUG
  storage:
    type: firestore
    collection_name: Example_FIRESTORE_CLUSTER_STATE
    # Credentials: Path to google service account file, used for Firestore and Google Storage.
    credentials_path: Example_GCP_CREDENTIALS
    project_id: Example_GCP_PROJECT
    audit_events_uri: 'firestore://Example_FIRESTORE_AUDIT_LOGS?projectID=Example_GCP_PROJECT&credentialsPath=Example_GCP_CREDENTIALS'
    audit_sessions_uri: 'gs://Example_BUCKET_NAME?projectID=Example_GCP_PROJECT&credentialsPath=Example_GCP_CREDENTIALS'
auth_service:
  enabled: true
  license_file: /var/lib/teleport/license.pem
  tokens:
    - "proxy:abcd123-insecure-do-not-use-this"
    - "node:efgh456-insecure-do-not-use-this"
proxy_service:
  enabled: false
ssh_service:
  enabled: false

The Teleport Auth Service reads a license file to authenticate your Teleport Enterprise account.

To obtain your license file, navigate to your Teleport account dashboard and log in. You can start at teleport.sh and enter your Teleport account name (e.g. my-company). After logging in you will see a "GENERATE LICENSE KEY" button, which will generate a new license file and allow you to download it.

Save your license file on the Auth Servers at the path, /var/lib/teleport/license.pem.

2. Set up Proxy

Save the following configuration file as /etc/teleport.yaml on the Proxy Server:

# enable multiplexing all traffic on TCP port 443
version: v3
teleport:
  auth_token: abcd123-insecure-do-not-use-this
  # We recommend using a TCP load balancer pointed to the auth servers when
  # setting up in High Availability mode.
  auth_server: auth.example.com:3025
# enable proxy service, disable auth and ssh
ssh_service:
  enabled: false
auth_service:
  enabled: false
proxy_service:
  enabled: true
  web_listen_addr: 0.0.0.0:443
  public_addr: teleport.example.com:443
  # automatically get an ACME certificate for teleport.example.com (works for a single proxy)
  acme:
    enabled: true
    email: example@email.com

3. Set up Teleport Nodes

Save the following configuration file as /etc/teleport.yaml on the Node:

version: v3
teleport:
  auth_token: efgh456-insecure-do-not-use-this
  # Teleport agents can be joined to the cluster via the Proxy Service's 
  # public address. This will establish a reverse tunnel between the Proxy 
  # Service and the agent that is used for all traffic.
  proxy_server: teleport.example.com:443
# enable the SSH Service and disable the Auth and Proxy Services
ssh_service:
  enabled: true
auth_service:
  enabled: false
proxy_service:
  enabled: false

4. Add Users

Follow our Local Users guide or integrate with Google Workspace to provide SSO access.