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Use Azure Key Vault secrets in pipeline activities

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APPLIES TO: Azure Data Factory Azure Synapse Analytics

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You can store credentials or secret values in an Azure Key Vault and use them during pipeline execution to pass to your activities.

Prerequisites

This feature relies on the data factory managed identity. Learn how it works from Managed identity for Data Factory and make sure your data factory has one associated.

Steps

  1. Open the properties of your data factory and copy the Managed Identity Application ID value.

    Managed Identity Value

  2. Open the key vault access policies and add the managed identity permissions to Get and List secrets.

    Screenshot that shows the "Access policies" page with the "Add Access Policy" action highlighted.

    Key Vault access policies

    Click Add, then click Save.

  3. Navigate to your Key Vault secret and copy the Secret Identifier.

    Secret Identifier

    Make a note of your secret URI that you want to get during your data factory pipeline run.

    Caution

    The secret URI is structured like this: {vaultBaseUrl}/secrets/{secret-name}/{secret-version}. The secret-version is optional; the latest version is returned when not specified. It is often desirable to specify a secret URI in a pipeline without a specific version so that the pipeline always uses the latest version of the secret.

  4. In your Data Factory pipeline, add a new Web activity and configure it as follows.

    Property Value
    Secure Output True
    URL [Your secret URI value]?api-version=7.0
    Method GET
    Authentication System Assigned Managed Identity
    Resource https://vault.azure.net

    Web activity

    Important

    You must add ?api-version=7.0 to the end of your secret URI.

    Caution

    Set the Secure Output option to true to prevent the secret value from being logged in plain text. Any further activities that consume this value should have their Secure Input option set to true.

  5. To use the value in another activity, use the following code expression @activity('Web1').output.value.

    Code expression

Related content

To learn how to use Azure Key Vault to store credentials for data stores and computes, see Store credentials in Azure Key Vault