Connecting ACR from other subscription

Question

Hello,

I have an Azure Container Registry and I need to give a client permission to pull images from it and push them to their own Azure Container Registry. What is the best and most secure way to grant this access? Is it necessary to create an AD user with a username and password for the client? If the client's process will be through a CI/CD tool, would it be necessary to use a Service Principal instead? Also, I understand that a Service Principal authenticates with a username and password. What is the difference between this and a user Azure AD username and password, Is it the headless authentication for the CI/CD tool?

I noticed that the "Connected Registries" option may be useful, but it is still in preview and I am unable to use preview options. Are there any alternative options available?

Thank you.

Answer 1

Hello yd7474

Welcome to Microsoft Q&A Platform, thanks for posting your query here.

To grant access to your Azure Container Registry to a client, you can use a Service Principal. A Service Principal is an Azure AD application that is authorized to access resources in your Azure subscription. It authenticates with a client ID and secret, rather than a username and password. This makes it more secure and suitable for use in automated processes, such as a CI/CD pipeline.

The difference between a Service Principal and an Azure AD user is that the former is meant for machine-to-machine authentication and does not require a user interface to log in. This makes it ideal for automated processes like CI/CD tools.

Hope this helps.

If you need further help on this, tag me in a comment.

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