In this blog post we’ll cover how to set up an SSH jump server. We’ll cover two open source projects. Both of these servers are easy to install and configure, are free and open-source, and are single-binary Linux daemons. An SSH jump server is a regular Linux server, accessible from the Internet, which is used as a gateway to access other Linux machines on a private network using the SSH protocol.

Teleport 4.4 is here! The major innovation we’re introducing in this version is much improved control over interactive sessions for SSH and Kubernetes protocols. We’ll do a deeper dive into session control later, but for those who aren’t familiar with it, Teleport is an open source project. It provides access to SSH servers and Kubernetes clusters on any infrastructure, on any cloud, or any IoT device, anywhere, even behind NAT.

A SSH session can be interactive or non-interactive. The session starts when a computer or human connects to a node using SSH. SSH sessions can be established using public/private key cryptography or can use short lived SSH Certificates, similar to how Teleport works. Organizations often want to know who is accessing the systems and provide a greater level of control over who and when people are accessing them, which is where Teleport 4.4 comes into play.

Kubernetes has some impressive baked-in role based access controls (RBAC). These controls allow administrators to define nuanced permissions when querying Kubernetes resources, like Pods, Deployments, ReplicaSets, etc. For those familiar with Kubernetes, the value of RBAC is immediately recognizable. A single Kubernetes cluster can contain your organization’s entire CI/CD pipeline, highly available SaaS products, or infrastructure that is in the process of being moved to the cloud.