Persistent Volume using Azure Files with Service Principal

Question

Dear all,

I would like to ask a question on the Azure Persistent volume setup, does Azure PV file share only support a plain text secretName?
Is it possible to use a service principal to setup the PV which maps to the azure file share?

Answer 1

@AIM Technical Welcome to Microsoft Q&A Forum, Thank you for posting your query here!
Firstly, apologies for the delay in responding here and any inconvenience this issue may have caused.

Service principal is used for interacting with Azure APIs, this is required by AKS. Refer to this article How setup the PVC with Azure File share and there is no option to use the SP there, The SP is used for internal authentication by the cluster. PV would not require additional SP while setting up.

Kindly let us know if you still have more questions on this. I wish to engage with you offline for a closer look.

Hope this helps!

Kindly let us know if the above helps or you need further assistance on this issue.

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Answer 2

@AIM Technical This option is not available for now, The feature is currently in Public Preview but from K8s v1.21+ CSI drivers will become default
https://github.com/kubernetes-sigs/azurefile-csi-driver/blob/master/deploy/example/e2e_usage.md#azurefile-static-provisioninguse-an-existing-azure-file-share

The new CSI based drivers use MSI/SP.

kubernetes-sigs/azurefile-csi-driver: Azure File CSI Driver (github.com)

Enable Container Storage Interface (CSI) drivers on Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) - Azure Kubernetes Service | Microsoft Learn
Use Container Storage Interface (CSI) drivers for Azure Files on Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) - Azure Kubernetes Service | Microsoft Learn

This will make use of the cluster's SP/managed Identity. Recommended ways to enable CSI drivers: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/aks/csi-storage-drivers

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Kindly let us know if you still have more questions on this. I wish to engage with you offline for a closer look and provide a quick and specialized assistance, please send an email with subject line “Attn:subm” to AzCommunity[at]Microsoft[dot]com referencing this thread and the Azure subscription ID, I will follow-up with you. Once again, apologies for any inconvenience with this issue.
Thanks for your patience and co-operation.

Hope this helps!

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