Skip to main content
Version: 14.x

Register a Kubernetes Cluster with a Static kubeconfig

While you can register a Kubernetes cluster with Teleport by running the Teleport Kubernetes Service on that cluster, you can also run the Teleport Kubernetes Service on a Linux host outside the cluster. This is useful if you want to decouple your Teleport deployment from the Kubernetes clusters you want to manage access to.

In this setup, the Teleport Kubernetes Service uses a kubeconfig file to authenticate to the API server of your chosen Kubernetes cluster.

Best practices for production security

When running Teleport in production, you should adhere to the following best practices to avoid security incidents:

  • Avoid using sudo in production environments unless it's necessary.
  • Create new, non-root, users and use test instances for experimenting with Teleport.
  • Run Teleport's services as a non-root user unless required. Only the SSH Service requires root access. Note that you will need root permissions (or the CAP_NET_BIND_SERVICE capability) to make Teleport listen on a port numbered < 1024 (e.g. 443).
  • Follow the principle of least privilege. Don't give users permissive roles when more a restrictive role will do. For example, don't assign users the built-in access,editor roles, which give them permissions to access and edit all cluster resources. Instead, define roles with the minimum required permissions for each user and configure access requests to provide temporary elevated permissions.
  • When you enroll Teleport resources—for example, new databases or applications—you should save the invitation token to a file. If you enter the token directly on the command line, a malicious user could view it by running the history command on a compromised system.

You should note that these practices aren't necessarily reflected in the examples used in documentation. Examples in the documentation are primarily intended for demonstration and for development environments.

Prerequisites​

  • A running Teleport cluster version 14.3.33 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.

    Visit Installation for instructions on downloading tctl and tsh.

  • A Kubernetes cluster you would like to access.
  • A Linux host deployed on your own infrastructure to run the Teleport Kubernetes Service. This can run outside of your Kubernetes cluster.
  • The kubectl command line tool installed on your workstation.
  • 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  14.3.33
    # 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. Generate a kubeconfig file​

The Teleport Kubernetes Service uses a kubeconfig file to authenticate to your Kubernetes cluster. In this section, we will generate a kubeconfig file so we can configure the Teleport Kubernetes Service to use it later in this guide.

Ensure your context is correct​

First, configure your local kubectl command to point at the Kubernetes cluster you want to register. You can use the following command to verify that the correct cluster is selected:

$ kubectl config get-contexts

Use this command to switch to the cluster assigned to CONTEXT_NAME:

# e.g., my-context
$ CONTEXT_NAME=context-name
$ kubectl config use-context ${CONTEXT_NAME?}

Run the script​

On your workstation, download Teleport's get-kubeconfig.sh script, which you will use to generate the kubeconfig file:

$ curl -OL \
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/gravitational/teleport/v14.3.33/examples/k8s-auth/get-kubeconfig.sh

get-kubeconfig.sh creates a service account for the Teleport Kubernetes Service that can get Kubernetes pods as well as impersonate users, groups, and other service accounts. The Teleport Kubernetes Service uses this service account to manage access to resources in your Kubernetes cluster. The script also ensures that there is a Kubernetes Secret in your cluster to store service account credentials.

get-kubeconfig.sh also creates a namespace called teleport for the resources it deploys, though you can choose a different name by assigning the TELEPORT_NAMESPACE environment variable in the shell where you run the script.

After creating resources, get-kubeconfig.sh writes a new kubeconfig file called kubeconfig in the directory where you run the script.

Run the get-kubeconfig.sh script:

$ bash get-kubeconfig.sh

The script is successful if you see this message:

Done!

Move the kubeconfig file to the host you are using to run the Teleport Kubernetes Service. We will assume that the kubeconfig file exists at /var/lib/teleport/kubeconfig.

Connecting multiple Kubernetes clusters?

You can connect multiple Kubernetes clusters to Teleport from one kubeconfig file if it contains multiple entries. Use merge-kubeconfigs.sh to combine multiple kubeconfig files generated by get-kubeconfig.sh.

Step 2/4. Set up the Teleport Kubernetes Service​

In this step, you will install the Teleport Kubernetes Service and configure it to use the kubeconfig file you generated to access a Kubernetes cluster.

Get a join token​

Establish trust between your Teleport cluster and your new Kubernetes Service instance by creating a join token:

$ tctl tokens add --type=kube --format=text --ttl=1h
abcd123-insecure-do-not-use-this

On the host where you are running the Teleport Kubernetes Service, create a file called /tmp/token that consists only of your token:

$ echo join-token | sudo tee /tmp/token

Install the Teleport Kubernetes Service​

Run the following commands on the host where you will install the Teleport Kubernetes Service:

Select an edition, then follow the instructions for that edition to install Teleport.

The following command updates the repository for the package manager on the local operating system and installs the provided Teleport version:

$ curl https://cdn.teleport.dev/install-v14.3.33.sh | bash -s 14.3.33

Configure the Teleport Kubernetes Service​

On the host where you will run the Teleport Kubernetes Service, create a file at /etc/teleport.yaml with the following content:

version: v3
teleport:
  join_params:
    token_name: "/tmp/token"
    method: token
  proxy_server: teleport.example.com:443
auth_service:
  enabled: off
proxy_service:
  enabled: off
ssh_service:
  enabled: off
kubernetes_service:
  enabled: "yes"
  kubeconfig_file: "/var/lib/teleport/kubeconfig"
  labels:
    "region": "us-east1"

Edit /etc/teleport.yaml to replace teleport.example.com:443 with the host and port of your Teleport Proxy Service or Teleport Cloud tenant, e.g., mytenant.teleport.sh:443.

Warning

When using kubeconfig_file, Amazon EKS users may need to replace illegal characters in the context names. Supported characters are alphanumeric characters, ., _, and -. EKS typically includes : and @ in their kubeconfig files, which are not allowed in Teleport.

Start the Teleport Kubernetes Service​

Configure the Teleport Kubernetes 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 Kubernetes Service.

On the host where you will run the Teleport Kubernetes Service, enable and start Teleport:

$ sudo systemctl enable teleport
$ sudo systemctl start teleport

You can check the status of the Teleport Kubernetes Service with systemctl status teleport and view its logs with journalctl -fu teleport.

Step 3/4. Grant access to your Teleport user​

Enable your Teleport user to access resources in your Kubernetes cluster so you can connect to the cluster later in this guide.

Kubernetes authentication​

To authenticate to a Kubernetes cluster via Teleport, your Teleport roles must allow access as at least one Kubernetes user or group. Ensure that you have a Teleport role that grants access to the cluster you plan to interact with.

Run the following command to get the Kubernetes user for your current context:

$ kubectl config view \
-o jsonpath="{.contexts[?(@.name==\"$(kubectl config current-context)\")].context.user}"

Create a file called kube-access.yaml with the following content, replacing USER with the output of the command above.

kind: role
metadata:
  name: kube-access
version: v6
spec:
  allow:
    kubernetes_labels:
      '*': '*'
    kubernetes_resources:
      - kind: 'pod'
        namespace: '*'
        name: '*'
    kubernetes_groups:
    - viewers
    kubernetes_users:
    # Replace USER with the Kubernetes user for your current context.
    - USER
  deny: {}

Apply your changes:

$ tctl create -f kube-access.yaml

Assign the kube-access role to your Teleport user by running the appropriate commands for your authentication provider:

  1. Retrieve your local user's configuration resource:

    $ tctl get users/$(tsh status -f json | jq -r '.active.username') > out.yaml

  2. Edit out.yaml, adding kube-access to the list of existing roles:

      roles:
       - access
       - auditor
       - editor
    +  - kube-access

  3. Apply your changes:

    $ tctl create -f out.yaml

  4. Sign out of the Teleport cluster and sign in again to assume the new role.

Now that Teleport RBAC is configured, you can authenticate to your Kubernetes cluster via Teleport. To interact with your Kubernetes cluster, you will need to configure authorization within Kubernetes.

Kubernetes authorization​

To configure authorization within your Kubernetes cluster, you need to create Kubernetes RoleBindings or ClusterRoleBindings that grant permissions to the subjects listed in kubernetes_users and kubernetes_groups.

For example, you can grant some limited read-only permissions to the viewers group used in the kube-access role defined above:

Create a file called viewers-bind.yaml with the following contents:

apiVersion: rbac.authorization.k8s.io/v1
kind: ClusterRoleBinding
metadata:
  name: viewers-crb
subjects:
- kind: Group
  # Bind the group "viewers", corresponding to the kubernetes_groups we assigned our "kube-access" role above
  name: viewers
  apiGroup: rbac.authorization.k8s.io
roleRef:
  kind: ClusterRole
  # "view" is a default ClusterRole that grants read-only access to resources
  # See: https://kubernetes.io/docs/reference/access-authn-authz/rbac/#user-facing-roles
  name: view
  apiGroup: rbac.authorization.k8s.io

Apply the ClusterRoleBinding with kubectl:

$ kubectl apply -f viewers-bind.yaml

Log out of Teleport and log in again.

Step 4/4. Access your Kubernetes cluster​

After Teleport starts with the above config, you should be able to see all new clusters:

$ tsh kube ls
Kube Cluster Name                       Labels           Selected
--------------------------------------- ------           --------
my-cluster                              region=us-east-1

To access your cluster, run the following command, replacing my-cluster with the name of the cluster you would like to access:

$ tsh kube login my-cluster
Logged into kubernetes cluster "my-cluster". Try 'kubectl version' to test the connection.