Service principal best practices

Question

We are attempting to connect our databricks cluster to Azure SQL Paas using service principal as documented HERE. I wanted to check what is the best practice to create a service principal for our cluster. We already have an existing service principal which we are using to connect to our Azure data lake. The SQL is within the same tenant as the databricks and data lake.

• Is it a best practice to reuse the existing service principal to access SQL? This would in turn decrease the operation overhead to manage the credentials.
• Or should we create a new service principal to access SQL?

Answer 1

Hello @Chand, Anupam SBOBNG-ITA/RX ,

Thanks for reaching out.

You can use same or have different Service principal for accessing Azure resources in general but we recommend following best practices highlighted here and general guidance about Securing service principals also more importantly [monitor service principal sign-ins][3] which enables you to assess whether and how you need to respond to potential issues such as unauthorized access.

Hope this helps.

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[3] : https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/active-directory/reports-monitoring/concept-sign-ins