Enforcing IP-Based Access Controls for Azure SQL in AI Applications

Question

Pulumi · Accepted Answer

To enforce IP-based access controls for Azure SQL in AI applications, you can set up firewall rules that limit which IPs can access your database. Azure SQL provides a feature called 'Firewall Rules' which enables you to specify a range of IP addresses allowed to access your SQL database.

Here's how you can do it using Pulumi:

1. Configure your Azure provider and necessary imports.
2. Create an Azure SQL Server which will host your databases.
3. Set up an Azure SQL Database within the server.
4. Apply firewall rules to the server to control inbound IP access.

Below is a Pulumi Python program that demonstrates how to set this up.

```python
import pulumi
import pulumi_azure_native as azure_native

# Configuration for your AI application that requires an Azure SQL Database with IP restrictions.
config = pulumi.Config()
allowed_ip_start = config.require('allowedIpStart')
allowed_ip_end = config.require('allowedIpEnd')

# Create an Azure Resource Group
resource_group = azure_native.resources.ResourceGroup('resourceGroup')

# Create an Azure SQL Server
# The server will host the SQL Database for your AI application.
sql_server = azure_native.sql.Server('sqlServer',
    resource_group_name=resource_group.name,
    administrator_login='pulumiadmin',
    administrator_login_password='complex-password-here!',
    version='12.0',  # Use the appropriate version
)

# Create an Azure SQL Database within the Server created above.
sql_database = azure_native.sql.Database('sqlDatabase',
    resource_group_name=resource_group.name,
    server_name=sql_server.name,
    sku=azure_native.sql.SkuArgs(
        name='S0',
        tier='Standard',
    ),
    # The basic SKU is typically for dev/test scenarios, not production workloads.
    # For AI applications, consider scaling up to more premium SKUs.
)

# Apply a firewall rule to the server to only allow access from a specific IP range.
firewall_rule = azure_native.sql.FirewallRule('firewallRule',
    resource_group_name=resource_group.name,
    server_name=sql_server.name,
    start_ip_address=allowed_ip_start,  # Start of the IP range.
    end_ip_address=allowed_ip_end,      # End of the IP range.
)

# Export the Azure SQL Server name and database name
pulumi.export('sql_server_name', sql_server.name)
pulumi.export('sql_database_name', sql_database.name)

```

In the above code:
- We establish the Azure infrastructure for hosting SQL databases.
- We create a resource group that acts as a container holding related resources for the Azure SQL Database.
- We instantiate a SQL server and a SQL database where our AI application data will reside.
- We set up a firewall rule to restrict access to the SQL server by defining a range of IP addresses that are allowed.

Be sure to replace `'complex-password-here!'` with a strong password for the database administrator. Also, you need to configure your allowed IP addresses in the Pulumi configuration file or CLI using `pulumi config set`.

Run this program using the Pulumi CLI by executing commands `pulumi up` to deploy the stack and `pulumi destroy` to tear down the resources when needed. Make sure you have the correct Azure credentials configured in your environment for Pulumi to use.