How to refer to other environment variable in Azure application settings

Question

How to refer to other environment variable in Azure application settings

Anonymous

Hi,

for my Payara based application (provided as Docker image) I need to set the JVM_ARGS environment value.

In there, I have to pass some passwords, see code below:

    "name": "JVM_ARGS",    "value": "-Xmx2048m -Djavax.net.ssl.keyStorePassword=$PAYARA_KEYSTORE_PASSWORD -Djavax.net.ssl.trustStorePassword=$PAYARA_TRUSTSTORE_PASSWORD ......",    "slotSetting": false  },

Are there any options to refer to another environment ($PAYARE_KEYSTORE_PASSWORD) variable here? Can I use template functions like "concat" or other operations here?

What other ways are recommended here to build up fields like

JVM_ARGS
connection URL´s
etc. ?

Thx for any hints,

Torsten

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Answer 1

Ryan Hill 30,281 Microsoft Employee Moderator

Hi @Anonymous

App settings get injected into the process as an environment variable as a literal value, so there isn't a way to refer to another setting. I don't know much about Payara but if it's possible to construct the connection string through runtime, then you can separate the connection string as separate settings and segment them together on container (app) startup.

If you can't do that and the main concern is avoid storing the password in plain text as an app setting, then one option could be using a key vault value reference.

Anonymous

2023-10-12T08:13:55.16+00:00

Hi @Ryan Hill

I´m aware of using key vault value reference but a.f.a.i.k. this cannot be combined within the whole string. Something like

value: "-Xmx2048m ... -Djavax.net.ssl.keyStorePassword=@Microsoft.KeyVault(VaultName=kv-xyz;SecretName=payara-keystore-password) -Djavax.net.ssl.trustStorePassword=@Microsoft.KeyVault(VaultName=kv-xyz;SecretName=payara-truststore-password) ...."

would be very helpful - but I´m afraid this is not yet supported.
Ryan Hill 30,281 Reputation points Microsoft Employee Moderator

2023-10-12T20:50:41.3133333+00:00

Yeah, that isn't supported. I can pass this feedback along but is there a reason why storing the entire value in key vault wouldn't suffice?
Anonymous

2023-10-13T08:44:19.4566667+00:00

the reason is that this completely obfuscates the JVM_ARGS parameter. Memory settings and all other settings will no more be visible - just because there´s one or two password parameters in this very large line.....
Ryan Hill 30,281 Reputation points Microsoft Employee Moderator

2023-10-13T19:43:49.1466667+00:00

I understand. I'll raise this feedback with the product team and if there are any other workarounds, I'll be sure to update my answer above.

EDIT 15 Oct 2023 I've confirmed with the product group that this indeed is not supported. The only option would be to store the entire string literal inside a Key Vault/App Config and reference that in app settings or do the concatenation at runtime inside your container if Payara allows that.

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How to refer to other environment variable in Azure application settings

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