Azure Native: Installation & Configuration

To provision resources with the Pulumi Azure Native provider, you need to have Azure credentials. Your Azure credentials are never sent to Pulumi.com. Pulumi uses the Azure SDK and the credentials in your environment to authenticate requests from your computer to Azure.

Installation

The Azure Native provider is available as a package in all Pulumi languages:

• JavaScript/TypeScript: @pulumi/azure-native
• Python: pulumi-azure-native
• Go: github.com/pulumi/pulumi-azure-native-sdk
• .NET: Pulumi.AzureNative
• Java: com.pulumi.azurenative

Authentication Methods

Pulumi can authenticate to Azure via several methods:

• Azure CLI
• OpenID Connect (OIDC)
• Service Principal with a client secret or certificate
• Managed Service Identity (MSI)

If you’re running the Pulumi CLI locally, in a developer scenario, we recommend using the Azure CLI. For team environments, particularly in Continuous Integration, one of the other options is strongly recommended.

Authenticate using the CLI

The CLI instructions assume you’re using the Azure CLI (az).

Log in to the Azure CLI and Pulumi will automatically use your credentials:

$ az login
A web browser has been opened at https://login.microsoftonline.com/organizations/oauth2/v2.0/authorize. Please continue the login in the web browser. If no web browser is available or if the web browser fails to open, use device code flow with `az login --use-device-code`.

Do as instructed to log in. After completed, az login will return and you are ready to go.

The Azure CLI, and thus Pulumi, will use the Default Subscription by default. You can override the subscription by setting your subscription ID to the id output from az account list’s output:

$ az account list

Pick out the <id> from the list and run:

$ az account set --subscription=<id>

Authenticate with OpenID Connect (OIDC)

OIDC allows you to establish a trust relationship between Azure and another identity provider such as GitHub or Azure DevOps. Once established, your program can exchange an ID token issued by the identity provider for an Azure token. Your Pulumi program running in the identity provider’s service, for instance, GitHub Actions CI or Azure DevOps Pipelines, can then access Azure, without storing any secrets in GitHub.

OIDC Azure Configuration

To configure the trust relationship in Azure, please refer to this guide. This needs to be set up only once.

OIDC Pulumi Provider Configuration

To use OIDC, either set the Pulumi configuration useOidc via pulumi config set azure-native:useOidc true or set the environment variable ARM_USE_OIDC to “true”.

Next, supply the Pulumi provider with the ID token to exchange for an Azure token. This step depends on the service (identity provider) your program will run on.

• On GitHub, you don’t need to configure anything since GitHub sets the relevant environment variables by default and the Pulumi provider reads them automatically.
• Other identity providers offer a way to access the ID token. For instance, in GitLab CI/CD jobs, the ID token is available via the environment variable GITLAB_OIDC_TOKEN. Configure the Pulumi provider to use the ID token by assigning it to the Pulumi configuration azure-native:oidcToken or the environment variable ARM_OIDC_TOKEN.
• Some identity providers, such as Azure Workload Identity, supply the ID token in a file. In this case, set the Pulumi configuration azure-native:oidcTokenFilePath or the environment variable ARM_OIDC_TOKEN_FILE_PATH to the path of the file.

Finally, configure the client and tenant IDs of your Azure Active Directory application. Refer to the above Azure documentation on how to retrieve the IDs, and set them via Pulumi config as azure-native:clientId and azure-native:tenantId or via environment variables as ARM_CLIENT_ID and ARM_TENANT_ID.

OIDC Dynamic Credentials with Pulumi ESC

In addition to configuring the Azure Native provider locally, you also have the option to centralize your configurations using Pulumi ESC (Environments, Secrets, and Configuration). Using this service will enable you to run Pulumi CLI commands with dynamically generated credentials, removing the need to configure and manage your credentials locally.

To do this, you will need to complete the following steps:

Configure OIDC between Pulumi and Azure

Refer to the Configuring OpenID Connect for Azure Guide for the step-by-step process on how to do this.

[Optional] Move Pulumi config to your ESC environment

With Pulumi ESC, you can define and expose environment variables as shown below:

values:
  azure:
    login:
      fn::open::azure-login:
        clientId: <your-client-id>
        tenantId: <your-tenant-id>
        subscriptionId: <your-subscription-id>
        oidc: true
  environmentVariables:
    ARM_USE_OIDC: 'true'
    ARM_CLIENT_ID: ${azure.login.clientId}
    ARM_TENANT_ID: ${azure.login.tenantId}
    ARM_OIDC_TOKEN: ${azure.login.oidc.token}
    ARM_SUBSCRIPTION_ID: ${azure.login.subscriptionId}

To expose configuration values to Pulumi IaC, you will need to add a second-level key named pulumiConfig and define your desired values underneath it. Further, if your workflow does not require the exposure of environment variables, you can also define those variables under the pulumiConfig block as shown below:

values:
  azure:
    login:
      fn::open::azure-login:
        clientId: <your-client-id>
        tenantId: <your-tenant-id>
        subscriptionId: <your-subscription-id>
        oidc: true
  pulumiConfig:
    azure-native:useOidc: 'true'
    azure:useOidc: 'true'
    azure-native:environment: <your-environment>
    azure-native:clientId: ${azure.login.clientId}
    azure-native:tenantId: ${azure.login.tenantId}
    azure-native:subscriptionId: ${azure.login.subscriptionId}
    azure-native:oidcToken: ${azure.login.oidc.token}

This will ensure that those values are scoped only to your pulumi run.

Import your environment

The last step is to update your project’s stack settings file (Pulumi.<stack-name>.yaml) to import your ESC environment as shown below:

environment:
  - <your-environment-name>

Make sure to replace <your-environment-name> with the name of the ESC environment you created in the previous steps.

You can test that your configuration is working by running the pulumi preview command. This will validate that your Azure resources can be deployed using the dynamically generated credentials in your environment file.

Authenticate using a Service Principal

A Service Principal is an application in Azure Active Directory with a client ID and a tenant ID, exactly like the one used in the OIDC scenario. In this scenario, instead of a pre-configured trust relationship, a client secret is used to authenticate with Azure.

Create your Service Principal and get your tokens

To use a Service Principal, you must first create one. If you already have one, skip this section.

You can create a Service Principal using the Azure CLI, using the Azure Cloud Shell, or using the Azure Portal.

After creating a Service Principal, you will obtain three important tokens:

• appId is the client ID
• tenant is the tenant ID
• password is the client secret

For example, a common Service Principal as displayed by the Azure CLI looks something like this:

{
  "appId": "WWWWWWWW-WWWW-WWWW-WWWW-WWWWWWWWWWWW",
  "displayName": "ServicePrincipalName",
  "name": "http://ServicePrincipalName",
  "password": "XXXXXXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXXXXXXXXXX",
  "tenant": "YYYYYYYY-YYYY-YYYY-YYYY-YYYYYYYYYYYY"
}

You also need to obtain a Subscription ID. To retrieve your current Subscription ID, you can use:

$ az account show --query id -o tsv

To list all available subscriptions, you can use:

$ az account list --query '[].{subscriptionName:name,subscriptionId:id}' -o tsv

Make tokens available to Pulumi

Once you have the Service Principal’s authorization tokens, choose one of the ways below to make them available to Pulumi:

Set configuration using pulumi config

Remember to pass --secret when setting clientSecret so that it is properly encrypted:

```bash
$ pulumi config set azure-native:clientId <clientID>
$ pulumi config set azure-native:clientSecret <clientSecret> --secret
$ pulumi config set azure-native:tenantId <tenantID>
$ pulumi config set azure-native:subscriptionId <subscriptionId>
# optional default location, otherwise set in code
$ pulumi config set azure-native:location <locationName>
```

Set configuration using environment variables

$ export ARM_CLIENT_ID=<YOUR_ARM_CLIENT_ID>
$ export ARM_CLIENT_SECRET=<YOUR_ARM_CLIENT_SECRET>
$ export ARM_TENANT_ID=<YOUR_ARM_TENANT_ID>
$ export ARM_SUBSCRIPTION_ID=<YOUR_ARM_SUBSCRIPTION_ID>
$ export ARM_LOCATION_NAME=<YOUR_ARM_LOCATION_NAME>

$ export ARM_CLIENT_ID=<YOUR_ARM_CLIENT_ID>
$ export ARM_CLIENT_SECRET=<YOUR_ARM_CLIENT_SECRET>
$ export ARM_TENANT_ID=<YOUR_ARM_TENANT_ID>
$ export ARM_SUBSCRIPTION_ID=<YOUR_ARM_SUBSCRIPTION_ID>
$ export ARM_LOCATION_NAME=<YOUR_ARM_LOCATION_NAME>

> $env:ARM_CLIENT_ID = "<YOUR_ARM_CLIENT_ID>"
> $env:ARM_CLIENT_SECRET = "<YOUR_ARM_CLIENT_SECRET>"
> $env:ARM_TENANT_ID = "<YOUR_ARM_TENANT_ID>"
> $env:ARM_SUBSCRIPTION_ID = "<YOUR_ARM_SUBSCRIPTION_ID>"
> $env:ARM_LOCATION_NAME = "<YOUR_ARM_LOCATION_NAME>"

Alternatively, you can use a certificate instead of a password as client secret. In this case, configure the provider as shown above except use clientCertPath/ARM_CLIENT_CERTIFICATE_PATH instead of clientSecret/ARM_CLIENT_SECRET.

Authenticate using Managed Service Identity (MSI)

MSI is configured in Azure. Once that’s done, tell the provider to use it by setting the useMsi config or the ARM_USE_MSI environment variable to true.

When using a system-assigned identity, or when using a user-assigned identity and there’s only a single one, you don’t need to do anything else. The provider will automatically use the identity.

When one or more resources in your program have multiple user-assigned identities, you need to set the clientId config or the ARM_CLIENT_ID environment variable to the client ID of the identity you want to use.

Configuration options

Use pulumi config set azure-native:<option> or pass options to the constructor of new azure-native.Provider.

All configuration parameters are optional.