Database Connection Options

There are three ways to connect Fivetran to your database:

• Directly by whitelisting Fivetran’s IP
• Via an SSH tunnel
• Via a reverse SSH tunnel

Whitelist Fivetran’s IPlink

The fastest and easiest way to connect is to allow Fivetran’s IP direct access to your database port. For more information about how to do this, visit the setup guide for your database.

SSH Tunnellink

If it’s not possible to provide direct access to your database port, you can connect to Fivetran via an SSH tunnel. You can also choose this connection method for an added layer of security. To connect via an SSH tunnel, you need to setup an SSH tunnel server that has access to your database port. The tunnel server’s SSH port needs to be accessible from Fivetran’s IP. You’ll also need to create an SSH user for Fivetran.

IMPORTANT: Fivetran generates a unique public SSH key for each destination. We support multiple connectors on a single SSH tunnel depending on the data volume and network bandwidth.

Create SSH userlink

Log in to your SSH tunnel host and run the following commands:

1. Create group fivetran:

   sudo groupadd fivetran
   

2. Create user fivetran:

   sudo useradd -m -g fivetran fivetran
   

3. Switch to the fivetran user:

   sudo su - fivetran
   

4. Create the .ssh directory:

   mkdir ~/.ssh
   

5. Set permissions:

   chmod 700 ~/.ssh
   

6. Change to the .ssh directory:

   cd ~/.ssh
   

7. Create the authorized_keys file:

   touch authorized_keys
   

8. Set permissions:

   chmod 600 authorized_keys
   

9. Using your favorite text editor, add the public SSH key from the database setup page in your Fivetran dashboard to the authorized_keys file. The key must be all on one line. Make sure that you don’t introduce any line breaks when cutting and pasting. The public SSH key is generated uniquely for each Fivetran destination.

As an extra layer of security, Fivetran enables TLS on your SSH connection by default. We recommend that you keep TLS enabled unless you know it is safe to forgo it. To disable TLS, set the Require TLS through tunnel toggle to OFF.

Once the user is created, you’ll need to allow port access.

Allow port accesslink

Make sure that port access is allowed from:

1. Fivetran’s IP to your tunnel server’s SSH port
2. Your SSH tunnel server to your source database port

If your SSH server and database happen to be in AWS, you can follow the instructions below to configure port access.

Reverse SSH Tunnellink

You can also connect Fivetran to your database via a Reverse SSH Tunnel if you are unable to provide direct port access to your instance.

To set up a reverse SSH tunnel to connect to Fivetran, contact Fivetran’s Sales Engineers and provide the following SSH keys:

• Fivetran user’s SSH public key
• Your SSH public key

To generate your SSH public key, do the following on your SSH host:

1. Generate an SSH key pair.

   ssh-keygen

2. View the contents of the public key. Copy the public key and send it to Fivetran’s sales engineers along with the Fivetran user’s public key.

   cat ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub

Once we have both keys, you will need the following information to complete your setup:

• Username fivetran of the SSH tunnel user you created
• Reverse SSH IP address (contact Fivetran Support to get this)
• SSH high port. It should be unique per connector instance and should not be a reserved port number (for instance, port 22 is reserved for SSH connections and port 443 is reserved for HTTPS).

  TIP: For the SSH high port number, we recommend adding a single digit - usually 1 - as a prefix to the source database port. For example, if you connect SQL Server, your database’s default port is 1433. Therefore, we recommend using port 11433 as the SSH high port for your first SQL Server connector, port 11434 for your second connector, and so on.

• Internal IP address or name of the local database host machine
• Internal open port for communication with the database host
• File path to the private key on the SSH host machine (this is normally id_rsa.pem or simply id_rsa)

Use the values above to replace the placeholder variables in the following script, then run it on the SSH host in a single line:

TIP: To track the progress of this script, remove the -f flag and add the -v flag to enable verbose logging. Without the flag, you will not see confirmation when the script finishes running successfully.

autossh -M 0 -f -N -R <SSH_HIGH_PORT>:<LOCAL_DB_MACHINE_NAME_OR_IP>:<LOCAL_DB_MACHINE_PORT> <FIVETRAN_SSH_USERNAME>@<FIVETRAN_SUPPLIED_IP> -g -i <PATH_TO_PRIVATE_KEY> -o ServerAliveInterval=10 -o ServerAliveCountMax=1 -o ExitOnForwardFailure=yes

If you use this autossh script again later for the same SSH high port, you need to terminate your original autossh script before proceeding.

After establishing a successful Reverse SSH connection, enter the following into the Fivetran setup form for your database:

All fields in { brackets } must be replaced with your own values.