Akeyless Remote Access provides secure remote access to resources using just-in-time credentials (dynamic secrets, rotated secrets, and SSH certificates).

This guide provides instructions on deploying Akeyless Secure Remote Access (SRA) using Docker Compose. The deployment includes the Akeyless Gateway, SRA Web UI, SRA SSH Proxy, and a Redis cache for performance optimization

Prerequisites

⚠️

Intended use & production guidance

The purpose of the Docker Compose is mainly for

• Evaluation of Akeyless Gateway and SRA quickly on a single host
• Demo/POC workflows (API, Web SRA, SSH proxy)
• Small pilots with limited users/targets where downtime is acceptable

For more information please refer to Readme.md file

• Docker Installed (version 20.10 or later)
• Docker Compose (version 1.29 or later)
• Gateway deployed and Unified value is set to TRUE
  • Make sure to set the UNIFIED_GATEWAY=true in both Gateway & SRA env files.
• Environment variables configured in .env files
• SSH Certificate Issuer for CLI Access.
• At least 1 vCPU available with 1GB RAM per Docker container.

🌐

Network Configuration

• Ensure sticky sessions are enabled.
• Cloud Provider Load Balancer: Configure the load balancer to support sticky sessions. For example, in AWS, you can use Elastic Load Balancer (ELB). Refer to the AWS ELB Sticky Sessions Documentation for guidance.

• When SSH sessions are routed through a load balancer, such as ELB, they may be disconnected due to idle connection timeouts. To avoid this, we recommend increasing the idle timeout to a higher value or setting it to unlimited.
• For AWS ELB, you can adjust the idle timeout settings as outlined in the AWS ELB Idle Timeout Documentation.

Deployment Overview

The Docker Compose file defines the following services:

Each service runs within an isolated Docker bridge network (internal-net), ensuring secure internal communication.

Configuration

The deployment uses number of environment files for configuration:

• gateway.env - Defines environment variables for Akeyless Gateway. For more information on deployment of Gateway via Docker Compose, please refer to Gateway documentation.
• sra.env - Defines environment variables for Secure Remote Access services.

Example Configuration

sra.env

#############################################
# Akeyless Gateway + SRA (.env)
# Notes:
# - Keep URLs reachable only within your network/cluster.
# - Keep service names aligned with your Compose/K8s services.
#############################################

## ── Modes & Feature Toggles ───────────────────────────────────────────────────
# UNIFIED_GATEWAY: Enables unified Akeyless Gateway mode
UNIFIED_GATEWAY="true"

# USE_CLUSTER_CACHE: use Redis caching for the Akeyless Gateway
# Best practice: set to "true" when Redis is available
USE_CLUSTER_CACHE="true"

# REMOTE_ACCESS_TYPE: Choose the SRA integration flow (e.g., "ssh-proxy" for Web-SSH)
REMOTE_ACCESS_TYPE="ssh-proxy"


## ── Gateway Endpoints ─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
# Public/cluster URL for clients reaching the Gateway (port 8000 by default)
GATEWAY_URL=http://akeyless-gateway:8000

# Internal API endpoint (port 8080) used for Gateway health checks or internal calls
INTERNAL_GATEWAY_API=http://akeyless-gateway:8080


## ── SRA Web-SSH (Default) ─────────────────────────────────────────────────────
# Internal URL for the SRA service (SSH proxy) used by the Gateway to route SSH traffic
# Default port for the Web-SSH service: 9900
REMOTE_ACCESS_SSH_SERVICE_INTERNAL_URL=http://akeyless-ssh:9900

# Actual SSH endpoint (container name and port 22 by default)
REMOTE_ACCESS_SSH_ENDPOINT=akeyless-ssh:22


## ── SSH Security ──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
# SSH_HOST_KEYS_PATH: Path to persistent host keys (recommended to persist!)
# See: https://docs.akeyless.io/docs/remote-access-advanced-configuration-docker#ssh-fingerprint
# Leave empty to use container defaults; set a volume path to persist across restarts.
SSH_HOST_KEYS_PATH=""

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Restricting User Access

To enable only specific users to use Secure Remote Access, make sure to add the relevant GATEWAY_AUTHORIZED_ACCESS_ID in the sra.env file.

A comma-separated list can be used for multiple IDs. While this is not mandatory, it is a good security practice to limit user access. If not configured, a Warning message will appear.

In order to provide just-in-time native CLI access for your users using SSH Certificates, you should mount your ca.pub file to /var/akeyless/creds/ inside of the akeyless-ssh component. To do this, provide a local directory which contains your ca.pub file which you created as part of your SSH Certificate Issuer creation.

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Creating a public key

If you don't have an SSH certificate ready, please follow this guide on creating SSH Cert issuer with Akeyless and set your ca.pub.

Running the Deployment

1. Ensure you have the docker-compose.yml and.envfiles are in your working directory.
2. Start the Services

Deploying as Secure Remote Access (SRA)

To deploy only the SRA components, run:

docker-compose --profile sra up -d

The above command will deploy SRA (if Gateway is not deployed, it will deploy this as well).

📘

Verify Deployment

Check that the deployed containers are running with docker ps

To stop and remove all services, run:

docker-compose down

Getting Started

Once Gateway & SRA are deployed, you can open SRA Web at http://localhost:8000/sra/portal and use your credentials to login to the local SRA portal.