Azure Managed Identities are a feature in Microsoft Azure that provides an easy and secure way to manage identities for resources such as Azure Virtual Machines, Azure App Service, and Azure Functions. A Managed Identity is an identity that is created and managed by Azure, without the need for a service principal or credentials to be stored in your code or on-premises infrastructure.
Here are a few examples of Azure Managed Identities:
- Azure Virtual Machines: With Managed Identities, you can provide a virtual machine with an identity that can be used to authenticate to Azure services. For example, if you have a virtual machine that needs to access a storage account, you can enable a Managed Identity on the virtual machine and then grant access to the storage account for that identity.
- Azure App Service: You can enable Managed Identities for Azure App Service to provide an identity for your web applications that can be used to authenticate to other Azure services. This can help simplify the authentication process and improve security.
- Azure Functions: Azure Functions can also use Managed Identities to authenticate to other Azure services. For example, you can use a Managed Identity to authenticate to an Azure Key Vault to retrieve secrets for your function.
- Azure Kubernetes Service: You can enable Managed Identities for Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) to provide an identity for your AKS cluster. This can help simplify the process of authenticating to other Azure services from within your cluster.
In summary, Azure Managed Identities provides a secure way to manage identities for Azure resources without the need to store credentials in code or on-premises infrastructure. It simplifies the authentication process and improves security by reducing the need to manage and secure service principals and credentials.
User Assigned Azure Managed Identities
User Assigned Managed Identities in Azure are a type of Managed Identity that you create, configure and assign to a specific Azure resource, such as a virtual machine, App Service or Azure Function, and can be used across multiple instances of the resource. Here are a few examples of User Assigned Managed Identities:
- Virtual Machine: Suppose you have multiple virtual machines that need to access a particular Azure resource such as a storage account or a database. You can create a User Assigned Managed Identity and assign it to all the virtual machines. The Managed Identity can then be granted the necessary permissions to access the resource. This way, you don’t need to create and manage separate Managed Identities for each virtual machine.
- Azure App Service: You can also create a User Assigned Managed Identity for your Azure App Service instances. This way, your web applications can authenticate to other Azure services using the same Managed Identity across all instances of the App Service.
- Azure Function: Similarly, you can create a User Assigned Managed Identity for Azure Functions and use it to authenticate to other Azure services. This can help simplify the authentication process and improve security.
- Azure Kubernetes Service: You can also create User Assigned Managed Identities for Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS). This enables you to provide a unique identity to your cluster, and you can use it to authenticate to other Azure services such as Azure Key Vault.
User Assigned Managed Identities provide a way to create and manage Managed Identities for specific Azure resources. They can be used across multiple instances of the resource, simplifying the authentication process and improving security.
System Assigned Azure Managed Identities
System Assigned Managed Identities in Azure are automatically created for certain Azure resources when they are deployed. These Managed Identities are bound to the lifecycle of the resource and cannot be used outside of it. Here are a few examples of System Assigned Managed Identities:
- Virtual Machines: When you create a virtual machine in Azure, a System Assigned Managed Identity is automatically created for it. This Managed Identity can be used to authenticate to other Azure services such as Azure Storage without the need to manage credentials.
- Azure App Service: Azure App Service instances also have System Assigned Managed Identities. These identities can be used to authenticate to other Azure services such as Azure Key Vault or Azure SQL Database.
- Azure Functions: System Assigned Managed Identities can also be created for Azure Functions. These Managed Identities can be used to authenticate to other Azure services such as Azure Blob Storage or Azure Cosmos DB.
- Azure Kubernetes Service: When you create an Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) cluster, a System Assigned Managed Identity is created for the cluster. This Managed Identity can be used to authenticate to other Azure services from within the cluster, such as Azure Container Registry or Azure Key Vault.
System Assigned Managed Identities are automatically created for certain Azure resources, simplifying the authentication process and improving security. They are bound to the lifecycle of the resource and cannot be used outside of it.
