Azure ARM handles identity requirements for the requests it receives through Azure AD. The requesting user should be a valid Azure AD user with a valid identity and authorization roles. The azure subscription for which the request is made should comply to deployment limits and biling policies.
There is a role of Azure Tenant that is associated with requesting user and Subscription. What role these tenants play and what is the workflow ?
I'm not sure what you mean exactly by the role of the Azure tenant in this context, but you can assign roles at the tenant scope and that's what the ARM template documentation describes. For example, you can assign an Owner role to a user at the tenant scope so that the user is an Owner of the tenant. As for the relationship between tenants and subscriptions, multiple subscriptions can trust the same Azure AD tenant, but each subscription can only trust a single tenant. You can associate a subscription with a tenant by logging in and selecting the Subscription, and then changing the directory. With a Global Admin or User Admin role, you can add or remove users from your tenant.
As I'm sure you already know, an Azure tenant is a dedicated and trusted instance of Azure AD. Typically, each tenant represents a single organization. The words "tenant" and "directory" are used interchangeably. The tenant is an account in Azure that comes with a subdomain and an associated Azure Active Directory. In order to use an Azure Active Directory you need to become a tenant within the system. So a tenant is basically securing a .onmicrosoft.com subdomain. At that point you would have one account registered in your Azure AD.
So in the context of the ARM template, you need an Azure tenant to house your users and link to your subscriptions.
A tenant represents an organization in Azure Active Directory. It's a dedicated Azure AD service instance that an organization receives and owns when it signs up for a Microsoft cloud service such as Azure, Microsoft Intune, or Microsoft 365. Each Azure AD tenant is distinct and separate from other Azure AD tenants. Once you have an Azure AD tenant, you can define an application and assign it permissions so it can call REST APIs. Your organization may already have an Azure AD tenant that you can use for your application.
In Azure AD, users are segmented into tenants. A tenant is a logical construct that represents a secure, dedicated instance of Azure AD typically associated with an organization. Each subscription is associated with an Azure AD tenant. Next, the ARM checks whether the user has sufficient permission to access a resource using Azure RBAC (Role based Access Control) which manages the permissions. An Azure role specifies a set of permissions a user may take on a specific resource. Next, the resource request is checked against an Azure Resource Policy which are defined to allow specific operations for a specific resource. Next, ARM checks the Azure subscription limit for the specific resources in that subscription for resource groups. And finally, the financial commitment associated with the subscription is checked as a final control before deploying the resource for management through the ARM.
ARM flow and working
Please find the below Microsoft documentation for your reference: -
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/cloud-adoption-framework/govern/resource-consistency/resource-access-management
Thanking you,
Related
Microsoft says, "In Azure Active Directory a tenant is an instance of Azure Active Directory that an organization receives when it signs up for a cloud application like Microsoft 365."
Could anyone explain what it means for a tenant to be an instance of the Azure Active Directory?
I know that an instance is basically a virtual machine. However, I'm failing to see how that definition applies in this particular context.
In your context, Instance of Azure Active Directory means Azure tenant.
I agree with #Peter Bons, Azure tenant is a dedicated and trusted instance of Azure AD.
Tenant refers to a single instance of Azure Active Directory.
Please note that tenant will be automatically created when your organization signs up for a Microsoft cloud service subscription.
To make it simple, you can consider it as parent group that includes users and groups along with the access control to application and resources.
A tenant is associated with a single identity and can have one or several subscriptions.
Based on your requirement, you can have single tenant or multitenant.
Every tenant is linked to a single Azure AD instance, which is shared with all tenant's subscriptions.
Azure AD Tenants are globally unique and have scopes with a domain name ending with ‘onmicrosoft.com’ and has a Tenant ID in the form of UUID/GUID.
For more in detail, please refer below links:
Understanding Tenants, Subscriptions, Regions and Geographies in Azure – siliconvalve
What is Azure Active Directory Tenant and How to create (azurelib.com)
I cannot set Azure Active Directory Admin in Azure SQL Database for myself.
attached pic
To set the as the Azure Active Directory Admin in the Azure SQL Server : You have to have the Owner role or the Contributor:
As, Azure AD is nothing but an identity store in Azure. Here we can
define users, groups, applications, and service principles. These
users can authenticate onto Azure and they can access resources that
are part of Azure subscription.
We can assign Azure AD roles to a user and these permissions are
normally given to manage the various aspects of Azure AD.
Role-based access control (RBAC), on the other hand, is used to authorise a user to use Azure resources.
For example, you might grant a user the ability to create a storage
account or manage resource groups by assigning them a role.
At the management group, subscription, resource group, or resource level, role-based access control can be implemented.
RBAC has three basic roles that apply to all resource types:
Owner: This role has full access to all the resources and can delegate
access to others.
Contributor: This role can create and manage all types of resources,
but can’t grant access to other users and groups.
Reader: This role can view existing Azure resources.
Here, is the way I am able to add, as the assigned role to me is Contributor Role.
Once you have the Owner or Contributor Role you will be able to add the Azure Active Directory Admin for the SQL server:
I have a serviceA in TenantA which needs to deploy resources to a subscription_X that is in tenantB say using ARM SDK. This means serviceA must be having rights to create the resource group in the subscription_X too.
How can serviceA in the tenantA get a contributor access to the tenantB's subscription_X ?
ServiceA is a micro service running in AKS or VM
A Managed Identity can only be used within the tenant that is linked to the subscription it is in.
So it won't work for this scenario.
A service principal can be used, but it would need to be made into a multi-tenant app + an admin from tenant B would have to go through a manually written admin consent URL for it to show up in their tenant.
I'd say the easiest approach is for tenant B admin to define an app registration/service principal in tenant B.
If you use certificate authentication, you'd generate the certificate and give them the public key so that they can assign it to the app in their tenant.
If using client secret, they will have to add it and send it to you.
From what I know it is not possible.
Considering Managed Identities are scoped to a single subscription, I don't think it is possible for you to manage resources in a different subscription using a Managed Identity in another subscription.
Similarly Service Principals are special kind of Azure users that gets created automatically when you assign access to resources in an Azure AD (tenant). They also can't be shared across tenants.
What you have to do is register your Azure AD application in the target tenant. As a result of that, a new Service Principal will be created in that tenant. You can then assign proper Azure RBAC role to this Service Principal so that it can perform necessary operations on Azure Subscriptions where it has been assigned a role. You can either use Client ID/Client Secret or Client ID/Client Certificate of your Azure AD application to authenticate the Service Principal.
What is the difference between IAM and Azure AD on the azure cloud?
They don't make it clear.
Identity Access Management is what they call the Role-Based Access Control system in Azure subscriptions. Basically, it allows you to give users certain roles on subscriptions, resource groups, or individual resources.
Azure AD is a more general identity management solution. It allows you to manage users and applications, users' access to those applications and more. Calling it the "same as on-prem AD" is not really quite right, since their features differ quite a lot. The general purpose is similar to on-prem AD of course.
Logically Azure subscriptions exist within one Azure AD (they are linked to one). But having your user account in Azure AD does not give you access to Azure subscriptions! In addition to a user having to be a member (or invited guest user) of the AAD assigned to the subscription, you also have to use the RBAC (IAM) system to assign roles for users.
Azure AD is for Authentiction - User must prove who they are using a Username and Password
IAM (RBAC) is for Authorization - a User is assigned a role or permissions to use a specific resource.
What is the difference between IAM and Azure AD on the azure cloud?
Azure IAM is Azure Role-Based Access control (RBAC). Work for Azure subscription, to manage Azure resources.
Using RBAC, you can segregate duties within your team and grant only
the amount of access to users that they need to perform their jobs.
Instead of giving everybody unrestricted permissions in your Azure
subscription or resources, you can allow only certain actions. For
example, use RBAC to let one employee manage virtual machines in a
subscription, while another can manage SQL databases within the same
subscription.
Azure AD same as on-prem AD, create users to access or manage some applications.
Azure IAM same as Active directory group(have some permissions), Azure AD users in this group will have those permissions.
Identify and access management (IAM) is called RBAC (Role-Based Access Control). This is used to grant level of access such as reader , contributor , owner to Azure resources and hence perform role assignment.
Azure AD is identity management solution for Azure. It is a live directory or a database that stores the user accounts and their password.
Following article describe how to move resources between Azure subscriptions.
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/articles/resource-group-move-resources/
However it says that both subscriptions must exist within the same tenant. Apparently that is not the case with my 2 Azure accounts and I didn't know until now that behind the scenes I have a Tenant ID linked to these accounts.
I'm now wondering how to get some of my accounts that I'm using for my company to be linked to a common Tenant ID.
Any ideas?
Updated answer for the new portal (early 2018).
Follow this link: How to associate or add an Azure subscription to Azure Active Directory to associate your subscription with the new tenant (directory).
Once you've done it, you can transfer between subscriptions.
Tenant here refers to Azure Active Directory (AAD) associated with your azure subscription.
The steps to change the associated AAD for an Azure subscription are described here.
The service admin of the Azure subscription, who is already a member of the current associated AAD, should also be member in AAD you want to associate.
Typically, existing AAD belongs to a Microsoft account. This accounts needs to be added to the target AAD.