Configure SCIM provisioning using Microsoft Azure Active Directory

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This article describes how to set up provisioning to Azure Databricks using Azure Active Directory.

You can set set up provisioning to Azure Databricks using Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) at the Azure Databricks account level or at the Azure Databricks workspace level.

Databricks recommends that you provision users, service principals, and groups to the account level and manage the assignment of users and groups to workspaces within Azure Databricks. Your workspaces must be enabled for identity federation, in order to manage the assignment of users to workspaces. If you have any workspaces that are not enabled for identity federation, you should continue to provision users, service principals, and groups directly to those workspaces.

Note

The way provisioning is configured is entirely separate from configuring authentication and conditional access for Azure Databricks workspaces or accounts. Authentication for Azure Databricks is handled automatically by Azure Active Directory, using the OpenID Connect protocol flow. You can configure conditional access, which lets you create rules to require multi-factor authentication or restrict logins to local networks, at the service level.

Requirements

  • Your Azure Databricks account must have the Premium Plan.
  • You must be a global administrator for the Azure Active Directory account.
  • Your Azure Active Directory account must be a Premium edition account to provision groups. Provisioning users is available for any Azure Active Directory edition.
  • To provision users to your Azure Databricks account, you must be a an Azure Databricks account admin.
  • To provision users to an Azure Databricks workspace, you must be a an Azure Databricks workspace admin.

Provision identities to your Azure Databricks account using Azure Active Directory (Azure AD)

You can sync account-level users and groups from your Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) tenant to Azure Databricks using a SCIM provisioning connector.

Important

If you already have SCIM connectors that sync users and groups directly to your workspaces and those workspaces are enabled for identity federation, you should disable those SCIM connectors when the account-level SCIM connector is enabled. If you have workspaces that are not enabled for identity federation, you should continue to use any SCIM connectors you have configured for those workspaces, running in parallel with the account-level SCIM connector.

Step 1: Configure Azure Databricks

  1. As an Azure Databricks account admin, log in to the Azure Databricks account console.
  2. Click User Settings Icon Settings.
  3. Click User Provisioning.
  4. Click Enable user provisioning.

Copy the SCIM token and the Account SCIM URL. You will use these to configure your Azure AD application.

Step 2: Configure the enterprise application

These instructions tell you how to create an enterprise application in the Azure portal and use that application for provisioning. If you have an existing enterprise application, you can modify it to automate SCIM provisioning using Microsoft Graph. This removes the need for a separate provisioning application in the Azure Portal.

Follow these steps to enable Azure AD to sync users and groups to your Azure Databricks account. This configuration is separate from any configurations you have created to sync users and groups to workspaces.

  1. In your Azure portal, go to Azure Active Directory > Enterprise Applications.
  2. Click + New Application above the application list. Under Add from the gallery, search for and select Azure Databricks SCIM Provisioning Connector.
  3. Enter a Name for the application and click Add.
  4. Under the Manage menu, click Provisioning.
  5. Set Provisioning Mode to Automatic.
  6. Set the SCIM API endpoint URL to the Account SCIM URL that you copied earlier.
  7. Set Secret Token to the Azure Databricks SCIM token that you generated earlier.
  8. Click Test Connection and wait for the message that confirms that the credentials are authorized to enable provisioning.
  9. Click Save.

Step 3: Assign users and groups to the application

Users and groups assigned to the SCIM application will be provisioned to the Azure Databricks account. If you have existing Azure Databricks workspaces, Databricks recommends that you add all existing users and groups in those workspaces to the SCIM application.

Note

Azure Active Directory does not support the automatic provisioning of service principals to Azure Databricks. You can add service principals your Azure Databricks account following Add a service principal to your Azure Databricks account.

  1. Go to Manage > Provisioning.
  2. Under Settings, set Scope to Sync only assigned users and groups. Databricks recommends this option, which syncs only users and groups assigned to the enterprise application.
  3. To start synchronizing Azure Active Directory users and groups to Azure Databricks, click the Provisioning Status toggle.
  4. Click Save.
  5. Go to Manage > Users and groups.
  6. Add some users and groups. Click Add user, select the users and groups, and click the Assign button.
  7. Wait a few minutes and check that the users and groups exist in your Azure Databricks account.

Users and groups that you add and assign will automatically be provisioned to the Azure Databricks account when Azure Active Directory schedules the next sync.

Important

If you remove a user from the account-level SCIM application, that user is also deleted from the account and removed from their workspaces, regardless of whether or not identity federation has been enabled. We recommend that you refrain from removing account users unless you want them to lose access to all workspaces in the account.

Provision identities to your Azure Databricks workspace using Azure Active Directory (Azure AD)

Important

This feature is in Public Preview.

If you have any workspaces not enabled for identity federation, you should provision users, service principals, and groups directly to those workspaces. This section describes how to do this.

In the following examples, replace <databricks-instance> with the workspace URL of your Azure Databricks deployment.

Step 1: Create the enterprise application and connect it to the Azure Databricks SCIM API

To set up provisioning directly to Azure Databricks workspaces using Azure Active Directory, you create an enterprise application for each Azure Databricks workspace.

These instructions tell you how to create an enterprise application in the Azure portal and use that application for provisioning. If you have an existing enterprise application, you can modify it to automate SCIM provisioning using Microsoft Graph. This removes the need for a separate provisioning application in the Azure Portal.

  1. As a workspace admin, log in to your Azure Databricks workspace.

  2. Generate a personal access token and copy it. You provide this token to Azure Active Directory in a subsequent step.

    Important

    Generate this token as an Azure Databricks workspace admin who is not managed by the Azure Active Directory enterprise application. If the Azure Databricks admin user who owns the personal access token is deprovisioned using Azure Active Directory, the SCIM provisioning application will be disabled.

  3. In your Azure portal, go to Azure Active Directory > Enterprise Applications.

  4. Click + New Application above the application list. Under Add from the gallery, search for and select Azure Databricks SCIM Provisioning Connector.

  5. Enter a Name for the application and click Add. Use a name that will help administrators find it, like <workspace-name>-provisioning.

  6. Under the Manage menu, click Provisioning.

  7. Set Provisioning Mode to Automatic.

  8. Enter the SCIM API endpoint URL. Append /api/2.0/preview/scim to your workspace URL:

    https://<databricks-instance>/api/2.0/preview/scim

    Replace <databricks-instance> with the workspace URL of your Azure Databricks deployment. See Get identifiers for workspace assets.

  9. Set Secret Token to the Azure Databricks personal access token that you generated in step 1.

  10. Click Test Connection and wait for the message that confirms that the credentials are authorized to enable provisioning.

  11. Optionally, enter a notification email to receive notifications of critical errors with SCIM provisioning.

  12. Click Save.

Step 2: Assign users and groups to the application

Note

Azure Active Directory does not support the automatic provisioning of service principals to Azure Databricks. You can add service principals your Azure Databricks workspace following Add a service principal to a workspace.

  1. Go to Manage > Provisioning.

  2. Under Settings, set Scope to Sync only assigned users and groups.

    Databricks recommends this option, which syncs only users and groups assigned to the enterprise application.

    Note

    Azure Active Directory does not support the automatic provisioning of nested groups to Azure Databricks. Azure Active Directory can only read and provision users that are immediate members of the explicitly assigned group. As a workaround, explicitly assign (or otherwise scope in) the groups that contain the users who need to be provisioned. For more information, see this FAQ.

  3. To start synchronizing Azure Active Directory users and groups to the Azure Databricks workspace, click the Provisioning Status toggle.

  4. Click Save.

  5. Test your provisioning setup:

    1. In your Azure Databricks SCIM Provisioning Connector, go to Manage > Users and groups.
    2. Add some users and groups. Click Add user, select the users and groups, and click the Assign button.
    3. Wait a few minutes and check that the users and groups exist in your Azure Databricks workspace.

In the future, users and groups that you add and assign are automatically provisioned when Azure Active Directory schedules the next sync.

Important

Do not assign the Azure Databricks workspace admin whose personal access token was used to configure the Azure Databricks SCIM Provisioning Connector application.

(Optional) Automate SCIM provisioning using Microsoft Graph

Microsoft Graph includes authentication and authorization libraries that you can integrate into your application to automate provisioning of users and groups to your Azure Databricks account or workspaces, instead of configuring a SCIM provisioning connector application.

  1. Follow the instructions for registering an application with Microsoft Graph. Make a note of the Application ID and the Tenant ID for the application
  2. Go to the applications’s Overview page. On that page:
    1. Configure a client secret for the application, and make a note of the secret.
    2. Grant the application these permissions:
      • Application.ReadWrite.All
      • Application.ReadWrite.OwnedBy
  3. Ask an Azure Active Directory administrator to grant admin consent.
  4. Update your application’s code to add support for Microsoft Graph.

Provisioning tips

  • Users and groups that existed in the Azure Databricks workspace prior to enabling provisioning exhibit the following behavior upon provisioning sync:
    • Are merged if they also exist in Azure Active Directory
    • Are ignored if they don’t exist in Azure Active Directory
  • User permissions that are assigned individually and are duplicated through membership in a group remain after the group membership is removed for the user.
  • Users removed from an Azure Databricks workspace directly, using the Azure Databricks workspace admin console:
    • Lose access to that Azure Databricks workspace but may still have access to other Azure Databricks workspaces.
    • Will not be synced again using Azure Active Directory provisioning, even if they remain in the enterprise application.
  • The initial Azure Active Directory sync is triggered immediately after you enable provisioning. Subsequent syncs are triggered every 20-40 minutes, depending on the number of users and groups in the application. See Provisioning summary report in the Azure Active Directory documentation.
  • You cannot update the username or email address of an Azure Databricks workspace user.
  • The admins group is a reserved group in Azure Databricks and cannot be removed.
  • Groups cannot be renamed in Azure Databricks; do not attempt to rename them in Azure Active Directory.
  • You can use the Azure Databricks Groups API 2.0 (legacy) or the Groups UI to get a list of members of any Azure Databricks workspace group.
  • You cannot sync nested groups or Azure Active Directory service principals from the Azure Databricks SCIM Provisioning Connector application. Databricks recommends that you use the enterpirse application to sync users and groups and manage nested groups and service principals within Azure Databricks. However, you can also use the Databricks Terraform provider or custom scripts that target the Azure Databricks SCIM API in order to sync nested groups or Azure Active Directory service principals.

Troubleshooting

Users and groups do not sync

  • If you are using the Azure Databricks SCIM Provisioning Connector application:
    • For workspace-level provisioning: In the Azure Databricks admin console, verify that the Azure Databricks user whose personal access token is being used by the Azure Databricks SCIM Provisioning Connector application is still a workspace admin user in Azure Databricks and that the token is still valid.
    • For account-level provisioning: In the account console verify that the Azure Databricks SCIM token that was used to set up provisioning is still valid.
  • Do not attempt to sync nested groups, which are not supported by Azure Active Directory automatic provisioning. For more information, see this FAQ.

Azure Active Directory service principals do not sync

  • The Azure Databricks SCIM Provisioning Connector application does not support syncing service principals.

After initial sync, the users and groups stop syncing

If you are using the Azure Databricks SCIM Provisioning Connector application: After the initial sync, Azure Active Directory does not sync immediately after you change user or group assignments. It schedules a sync with the application after a delay, based on the number of users and groups. To request an immediate sync, go to Manage > Provisioning for the enterprise application and select Clear current state and restart synchronization.

Azure Active Directory provisioning service IP range not accessible

The Azure Active Directory provisioning service operates under specific IP ranges. If you need to restrict network access, you must allow traffic from the IP addresses for AzureActiveDirectory in this IP range file. For more information, see IP Ranges.