Azure Key Vault secret store

Detailed information on the Azure Key Vault secret store component

Note

Azure Managed Identity can be used for Azure Key Vault access on Kubernetes. Instructions here.

Component format

To setup Azure Key Vault secret store create a component of type secretstores.azure.keyvault. See this guide on how to create and apply a secretstore configuration. See this guide on referencing secrets to retrieve and use the secret with Dapr components.

See also configure the component guide in this page.

apiVersion: dapr.io/v1alpha1
kind: Component
metadata:
  name: azurekeyvault
  namespace: default
spec:
  type: secretstores.azure.keyvault
  version: v1
  metadata:
  - name: vaultName
    value: [your_keyvault_name]
  - name: spnTenantId
    value: "[your_service_principal_tenant_id]"
  - name: spnClientId
    value: "[your_service_principal_app_id]"
    value : "[pfx_certificate_contents]"
  - name: spnCertificateFile
    value : "[pfx_certificate_file_fully_qualified_local_path]"

Warning

The above example uses secrets as plain strings. It is recommended to use a local secret store such as Kubernetes secret store or a local file to bootstrap secure key storage.

Spec metadata fields

Self-Hosted

Kubernetes

Setup Key Vault and service principal

Prerequisites

• Azure Subscription
• Azure CLI

Steps

1. Login to Azure and set the default subscription

   # Log in Azure
   az login
   # Set your subscription to the default subscription
   az account set -s [your subscription id]

2. Create an Azure Key Vault in a region

   az keyvault create --location [region] --name [your_keyvault] --resource-group [your resource group]

3. Create a service principal

   Create a service principal with a new certificate and store the 1-year certificate inside your keyvault’s certificate vault. You can skip this step if you want to use an existing service principal for keyvault instead of creating new one

   az ad sp create-for-rbac --name [your_service_principal_name] --create-cert --cert [certificate_name] --keyvault [your_keyvault] --skip-assignment --years 1
   {
      "appId": "a4f90000-0000-0000-0000-00000011d000",
      "displayName": "[your_service_principal_name]",
      "name": "http://[your_service_principal_name]",
      "password": null,
      "tenant": "34f90000-0000-0000-0000-00000011d000"
   }

   Save both the appId and tenant from the output which will be used in the next step

4. Get the Object Id for [your_service_principal_name]

   az ad sp show --id [service_principal_app_id]
   {
       ...
       "objectId": "[your_service_principal_object_id]",
       "objectType": "ServicePrincipal",
       ...
   }

5. Grant the service principal the GET permission to your Azure Key Vault

   az keyvault set-policy --name [your_keyvault] --object-id [your_service_principal_object_id] --secret-permissions get

   Now that your service principal has access to your keyvault you are ready to configure the secret store component to use secrets stored in your keyvault to access other components securely.

6. Download the certificate in PFX format from your Azure Key Vault either using the Azure portal or the Azure CLI:

• Using the Azure portal:

  Go to your key vault on the Azure portal and navigate to the Certificates tab under Settings. Find the certificate that was created during the service principal creation, named [certificate_name] and click on it.

  Click Download in PFX/PEM format to download the certificate.

• Using the Azure CLI:

  az keyvault secret download --vault-name [your_keyvault] --name [certificate_name] --encoding base64 --file [certificate_name].pfx

Configure the component

• Self-Hosted
• Kubernetes

1. Copy downloaded PFX cert from your Azure Keyvault into your components directory or a secure location on your local disk

2. Create a file called azurekeyvault.yaml in the components directory

   apiVersion: dapr.io/v1alpha1
   kind: Component
   metadata:
     name: azurekeyvault
     namespace: default
   spec:
     type: secretstores.azure.keyvault
     version: v1
     metadata:
     - name: vaultName
       value: [your_keyvault_name]
     - name: spnTenantId
       value: "[your_service_principal_tenant_id]"
     - name: spnClientId
       value: "[your_service_principal_app_id]"
     - name: spnCertificateFile
       value : "[pfx_certificate_file_fully_qualified_local_path]"

Fill in the metadata fields with your Key Vault details from the above setup process.

In Kubernetes, you store the certificate for the service principal into the Kubernetes Secret Store and then enable Azure Key Vault secret store with this certificate in Kubernetes secretstore.

1. Create a kubernetes secret using the following command:

   kubectl create secret generic [your_k8s_spn_secret_name] --from-file=[your_k8s_spn_secret_key]=[pfx_certificate_file_fully_qualified_local_path]

• [pfx_certificate_file_fully_qualified_local_path] is the path of PFX cert file you downloaded above
• [your_k8s_spn_secret_name] is secret name in Kubernetes secret store
• [your_k8s_spn_secret_key] is secret key in Kubernetes secret store

1. Create a azurekeyvault.yaml component file

The component yaml refers to the Kubernetes secretstore using auth property and secretKeyRef refers to the certificate stored in Kubernetes secret store.

apiVersion: dapr.io/v1alpha1
kind: Component
metadata:
  name: azurekeyvault
  namespace: default
spec:
  type: secretstores.azure.keyvault
  version: v1
  metadata:
  - name: vaultName
    value: [your_keyvault_name]
  - name: spnTenantId
    value: "[your_service_principal_tenant_id]"
  - name: spnClientId
    value: "[your_service_principal_app_id]"
  - name: spnCertificate
    secretKeyRef:
      name: [your_k8s_spn_secret_name]
      key: [your_k8s_spn_secret_key]
auth:
    secretStore: kubernetes

1. Apply azurekeyvault.yaml component

kubectl apply -f azurekeyvault.yaml

References

• Azure CLI Keyvault CLI
• Create an Azure service principal with Azure CLI
• Secrets building block
• How-To: Retrieve a secret
• How-To: Reference secrets in Dapr components
• Secrets API reference

Last modified May 26, 2021: Update to point to 1.2 (#1518) (c690379)