Remote admin of MySQL production server

Question

Just wondering about best security practices for remote admin of a MySQL db in a production, internet connected server?

Specifically if the website is on the same server then it makes sense to bind the server to 127.0.0.1, but then this would only allow remote admin from the remote server (not really remote), and thus in my case ssh, where i much prefer the GUI that mysql comes with.

What is the best way to use the GUI on a remote server. VPN? ssh tunnel? ssl? is there even a need to in peoples minds? because most of the setup should be done in dev and then cloned over by scripts etc?

Answer 1

Or in fact, don't use the GUI at all. MySQL does not come with a GUI (despite your suggestion that it does).

As you won't really be doing anything fancy in production anyway, except possibly running carefully vetted queries, you don't need a GUI.

Any schema migrations etc, should be developed on test systems and then tested before they get anywhere near production - the scripts should really be bug-free before they get to production. That's my take anyway.

If developers really WANT to use a gui to prepare migrations, they can, but ultimately only the CODE can go into your version control system anyway.

Answer 2

Set up a ssh tunnel to port 3306 on the remote server. Then you can run any tool/GUI you'd like as if it was on your local machine.

For security, make sure ssh is securely set up of course, limits on users, disabling login with passwords, change default port (22), limit host permitted to connect (optionally with firewall/iptables). And make sure that the connecting machine is securely locked down as well :-)

For read-only queries, I've set up replication to a secondary server using stunnel, which I access using ssh as above.