The recommended approach to authenticate an Azure-hosted app to other Azure resources is to use a managed identity. This approach is supported for most Azure services, including apps hosted on Azure App Service, Azure Container Apps, and Azure Virtual Machines. Discover more about different authentication techniques and approaches on the authentication overview page. In the sections ahead, you'll learn:
A managed identity enables your app to securely connect to other Azure resources without the use of secret keys or other application secrets. Internally, Azure tracks the identity and which resources it's allowed to connect to. Azure uses this information to automatically obtain Microsoft Entra tokens for the app to allow it to connect to other Azure resources.
There are two types of managed identities to consider when configuring your hosted app:
The sections ahead describe the steps to enable and use a system-assigned managed identity for an Azure-hosted app. If you need to use a user-assigned managed identity, visit the user-assigned managed identities article for more information.
Enable a system-assigned managed identity on the Azure hosting resourceTo get started using a system-assigned managed identity with your app, enable the identity on the Azure resource hosting your app, such as an Azure App Service, Azure Container App, or Azure Virtual Machine.
You can enable a system-assigned managed identity for an Azure resource using either the Azure portal or the Azure CLI.
In the Azure portal, navigate to the resource that hosts your application code, such as an Azure App Service or Azure Container App instance.
From the resource's Overview page, expand Settings and select Identity from the navigation.
On the Identity page, toggle the Status slider to On.
Select Save to apply your changes.
Azure CLI commands can be run in the Azure Cloud Shell or on a workstation with the Azure CLI installed.
The Azure CLI commands used to enable managed identity for an Azure resource are of the form az <command-group> identity --resource-group <resource-group-name> --name <resource-name>
. Specific commands for popular Azure services are shown below.
Azure App Service:
az webapp identity assign \
--resource-group <resource-group-name> \
--name <web-app-name>
Azure Virtual Machine:
az vm identity assign \
--resource-group <resource-group-name> \
--name <virtual-machine-name>
The output resembles the following:
{
"principalId": "99999999-9999-9999-9999-999999999999",
"tenantId": "33333333-3333-3333-3333-333333333333",
"type": "SystemAssigned",
"userAssignedIdentities": null
}
The principalId
value is the unique ID of the managed identity. Keep a copy of this output, as you'll need these values in the next step.
Next, determine which roles your app needs and assign those roles to the managed identity. You can assign roles to a managed identity at the following scopes:
The following example shows how to assign roles at the resource group scope, since many apps manage all their related Azure resources using a single resource group.
Navigate to the Overview page of the resource group that contains the app with the system-assigned managed identity.
Select Access control (IAM) on the left navigation.
On the Access control (IAM) page, select + Add on the top menu and then choose Add role assignment to navigate to the Add role assignment page.
The Add role assignment page presents a tabbed, multi-step workflow to assign roles to identities. On the initial Role tab, use the search box at the top to locate the role you want to assign to the identity.
Select the role from the results and then choose Next to move to the Members tab.
For the Assign access to option, select Managed identity.
For the Members option, choose + Select members to open the Select managed identities panel.
On the Select managed identities panel, use the Subscription and Managed identity dropdowns to filter the search results for your identities. Use the Select search box to locate the system-identity you enabled for the Azure resource hosting your app.
Select the identity and choose Select at the bottom of the panel to continue.
Select Review + assign at the bottom of the page.
On the final Review + assign tab, select Review + assign to complete the workflow.
A managed identity is assigned a role in Azure using the az role assignment create command:
az role assignment create \
--assignee "{managedIdentityId}" \
--role "{roleName}" \
--scope "{scope}"
To get the role names to which a service principal can be assigned, use the az role definition list command:
az role definition list \
--query "sort_by([].{roleName:roleName, description:description}, &roleName)" \
--output table
For example, to allow the managed identity with the ID of 99999999-9999-9999-9999-999999999999
read, write, and delete access to Azure Storage blob containers and data to all storage accounts in the msdocs-dotnet-sdk-auth-example resource group, assign the application service principal to the Storage Blob Data Contributor role using the following command:
az role assignment create \
--assignee 99999999-9999-9999-9999-999999999999 \
--role "Storage Blob Data Contributor" \
--scope "/subscriptions/00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000/resourceGroups/msdocs-dotnet-sdk-auth-example"
For information on assigning permissions at the resource or subscription level using the Azure CLI, see the article Assign Azure roles using the Azure CLI.
Authenticate to Azure services from your appThe Azure Identity library provides various credentialsâimplementations of TokenCredential
adapted to supporting different scenarios and Microsoft Entra authentication flows. Since managed identity is unavailable when running locally, the steps ahead demonstrate which credential to use in which scenario:
DefaultAzureCredential
discovers user credentials from your local tooling or IDE, such as the Azure CLI or Visual Studio. It also provides flexibility and convenience for retries, wait times for responses, and support for multiple authentication options. Visit the Authenticate to Azure services during local development article to learn more.Add the Azure.Identity package. In an ASP.NET Core project, also install the Microsoft.Extensions.Azure package:
In a terminal of your choice, navigate to the application project directory and run the following commands:
dotnet add package Azure.Identity
dotnet add package Microsoft.Extensions.Azure
Right-click your project in the Visual Studio Solution Explorer window and select Manage NuGet Packages. Search for Azure.Identity, and install the matching package. Repeat this process for the Microsoft.Extensions.Azure package.
Azure services are accessed using specialized client classes from the various Azure SDK client libraries. These classes and your own custom services should be registered for dependency injection so they can be used throughout your app. In Program.cs
, complete the following steps to configure a client class for dependency injection and token-based authentication:
Azure.Identity
and Microsoft.Extensions.Azure
namespaces via using
directives.Add
-prefixed extension method.TokenCredential
instance to the UseCredential
method:
DefaultAzureCredential
when your app is running locally.ManagedIdentityCredential
when your app is running in Azure.builder.Services.AddAzureClients(clientBuilder =>
{
clientBuilder.AddBlobServiceClient(
new Uri("https://<account-name>.blob.core.windows.net"));
TokenCredential credential = null;
if (builder.Environment.IsProduction())
{
// Managed identity token credential discovered when running in Azure environments
credential = new ManagedIdentityCredential();
}
else
{
// Running locally on dev machine - DO NOT use in production or outside of local dev
credential = new DefaultAzureCredential();
}
clientBuilder.UseCredential(credential);
});
An alternative to the UseCredential
method is to provide the credential to the service client directly:
TokenCredential credential = null;
if (builder.Environment.IsProduction() || builder.Environment.IsStaging())
{
// Managed identity token credential discovered when running in Azure environments
credential = new ManagedIdentityCredential();
}
else
{
// Running locally on dev machine - DO NOT use in production or outside of local dev
credential = new DefaultAzureCredential();
}
builder.Services.AddSingleton<BlobServiceClient>(_ =>
new BlobServiceClient(
new Uri("https://<account-name>.blob.core.windows.net"), credential));
The preceding code behaves differently depending on the environment where it's running:
DefaultAzureCredential
looks in the environment variables for an application service principal or at locally installed developer tools, such as Visual Studio, for a set of developer credentials.ManagedIdentityCredential
discovers your managed identity configurations to authenticate to other services automatically.RetroSearch is an open source project built by @garambo | Open a GitHub Issue
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