Azure Key Vault Administration client library for Python - version 4.4.0

Article
02/28/2024

Note: The Administration library only works with Managed HSM – functions targeting a Key Vault will fail.

Azure Key Vault helps solve the following problems:

Vault administration (this library) - role-based access control (RBAC), and vault-level backup and restore options
Cryptographic key management (azure-keyvault-keys) - create, store, and control access to the keys used to encrypt your data
Secrets management (azure-keyvault-secrets) - securely store and control access to tokens, passwords, certificates, API keys, and other secrets
Certificate management (azure-keyvault-certificates) - create, manage, and deploy public and private SSL/TLS certificates

Disclaimer

Azure SDK Python packages support for Python 2.7 has ended 01 January 2022. For more information and questions, please refer to https://github.com/Azure/azure-sdk-for-python/issues/20691. Python 3.8 or later is required to use this package. For more details, please refer to Azure SDK for Python version support policy.

Getting started

Install packages

Install azure-keyvault-administration and azure-identity with pip:

pip install azure-keyvault-administration azure-identity

azure-identity is used for Azure Active Directory authentication as demonstrated below.

Prerequisites

An Azure subscription
Python 3.8 or later
An existing Key Vault Managed HSM. If you need to create one, you can do so using the Azure CLI by following the steps in this document.

Authenticate the client

In order to interact with the Azure Key Vault service, you will need an instance of either a KeyVaultAccessControlClient or KeyVaultBackupClient, as well as a vault url (which you may see as "DNS Name" in the Azure Portal) and a credential object. This document demonstrates using a DefaultAzureCredential, which is appropriate for most scenarios, including local development and production environments. We recommend using a managed identity for authentication in production environments.

See azure-identity documentation for more information about other methods of authentication and their corresponding credential types.

Create a KeyVaultAccessControlClient

After configuring your environment for the DefaultAzureCredential to use a suitable method of authentication, you can do the following to create an access control client (replacing the value of vault_url with your Managed HSM's URL):

from azure.identity import DefaultAzureCredential
from azure.keyvault.administration import KeyVaultAccessControlClient

MANAGED_HSM_URL = os.environ["MANAGED_HSM_URL"]
credential = DefaultAzureCredential()
client = KeyVaultAccessControlClient(vault_url=MANAGED_HSM_URL, credential=credential)

NOTE: For an asynchronous client, import azure.keyvault.administration.aio's KeyVaultAccessControlClient instead.

Create a KeyVaultBackupClient

After configuring your environment for the DefaultAzureCredential to use a suitable method of authentication, you can do the following to create a backup client (replacing the value of vault_url with your Managed HSM's URL):

from azure.identity import DefaultAzureCredential
from azure.keyvault.administration import KeyVaultBackupClient

MANAGED_HSM_URL = os.environ["MANAGED_HSM_URL"]
credential = DefaultAzureCredential()
client = KeyVaultBackupClient(vault_url=MANAGED_HSM_URL, credential=credential)

NOTE: For an asynchronous client, import azure.keyvault.administration.aio's KeyVaultBackupClient instead.

Create a KeyVaultSettingsClient

After configuring your environment for the DefaultAzureCredential to use a suitable method of authentication, you can do the following to create a settings client (replacing the value of vault_url with your Managed HSM's URL):

from azure.identity import DefaultAzureCredential
from azure.keyvault.administration import KeyVaultSettingsClient

MANAGED_HSM_URL = os.environ["MANAGED_HSM_URL"]
credential = DefaultAzureCredential()
client = KeyVaultSettingsClient(vault_url=MANAGED_HSM_URL, credential=credential)

NOTE: For an asynchronous client, import azure.keyvault.administration.aio's KeyVaultSettingsClient instead.

Key concepts

Role definition

A role definition defines the operations that can be performed, such as read, write, and delete. It can also define the operations that are excluded from allowed operations.

A role definition is specified as part of a role assignment.

Role assignment

A role assignment is the association of a role definition to a service principal. They can be created, listed, fetched individually, and deleted.

KeyVaultAccessControlClient

A KeyVaultAccessControlClient manages role definitions and role assignments.

KeyVaultBackupClient

A KeyVaultBackupClient performs full key backups, full key restores, and selective key restores.

KeyVaultSettingsClient

A KeyVaultSettingsClient manages Managed HSM account settings.

Examples

This section contains code snippets covering common tasks:

Access control
Backup and restore

List all role definitions

list_role_definitions can be used by a KeyVaultAccessControlClient to list the role definitions available for assignment.

from azure.keyvault.administration import KeyVaultRoleScope

role_definitions = client.list_role_definitions(scope=KeyVaultRoleScope.GLOBAL)
for definition in role_definitions:
    print(f"Role name: {definition.role_name}; Role definition name: {definition.name}")

Set, get, and delete a role definition

set_role_definition can be used by a KeyVaultAccessControlClient to either create a custom role definition or update an existing definition with the specified unique name (a UUID).

from azure.keyvault.administration import KeyVaultDataAction, KeyVaultPermission, KeyVaultRoleScope

role_name = "customRole"
scope = KeyVaultRoleScope.GLOBAL
permissions = [KeyVaultPermission(data_actions=[KeyVaultDataAction.CREATE_HSM_KEY])]
role_definition = client.set_role_definition(scope=scope, role_name=role_name, permissions=permissions)

new_permissions = [
    KeyVaultPermission(
        data_actions=[KeyVaultDataAction.READ_HSM_KEY],
        not_data_actions=[KeyVaultDataAction.CREATE_HSM_KEY]
    )
]
unique_definition_name = role_definition.name
updated_definition = client.set_role_definition(
    scope=scope, name=unique_definition_name, role_name=role_name, permissions=new_permissions
)

get_role_definition can be used by a KeyVaultAccessControlClient to fetch a role definition with the specified scope and unique name.

fetched_definition = client.get_role_definition(scope=scope, name=unique_definition_name)

delete_role_definition can be used by a KeyVaultAccessControlClient to delete a role definition with the specified scope and unique name.

client.delete_role_definition(scope=scope, name=unique_definition_name)

List all role assignments

list_role_assignments can be used by a KeyVaultAccessControlClient to list all of the current role assignments.

from azure.keyvault.administration import KeyVaultRoleScope

role_assignments = client.list_role_assignments(KeyVaultRoleScope.GLOBAL)
for assignment in role_assignments:
    assert assignment.properties
    print(f"Role assignment name: {assignment.name}")
    print(f"Principal ID associated with this assignment: {assignment.properties.principal_id}")

Create, get, and delete a role assignment

Role assignments assign a role to a service principal. This will require a role definition ID and service principal object ID. You can use an ID from the retrieved list of role definitions for the former, and an assignment's principal_id from the list retrieved in the above snippet for the latter. Provide these values, and a scope, to a KeyVaultAccessControlClient's create_role_assignment method.

from azure.keyvault.administration import KeyVaultRoleScope

scope = KeyVaultRoleScope.GLOBAL
role_assignment = client.create_role_assignment(scope=scope, definition_id=definition_id, principal_id=principal_id)
print(f"Role assignment {role_assignment.name} created successfully.")

get_role_assignment can be used by a KeyVaultAccessControlClient to fetch an existing role assignment with the specified scope and unique name.

fetched_assignment = client.get_role_assignment(scope=scope, name=role_assignment.name)
assert fetched_assignment.properties
print(f"Role assignment for principal {fetched_assignment.properties.principal_id} fetched successfully.")

delete_role_assignment can be used by a KeyVaultAccessControlClient to delete a role assignment with the specified scope and unique name.

client.delete_role_assignment(scope=scope, name=role_assignment.name)

Perform a full key backup

The KeyVaultBackupClient can be used to back up your entire collection of keys. The backing store for full key backups is a blob storage container using Shared Access Signature (SAS) authentication.

For more details on creating a SAS token using a BlobServiceClient from azure-storage-blob, refer to the library's credential documentation. Alternatively, it is possible to generate a SAS token in Storage Explorer.

CONTAINER_URL = os.environ["CONTAINER_URL"]
SAS_TOKEN = os.environ["SAS_TOKEN"]

backup_result: KeyVaultBackupResult = client.begin_backup(CONTAINER_URL, sas_token=SAS_TOKEN).result()
print(f"Azure Storage Blob URL of the backup: {backup_result.folder_url}")

Note that the begin_backup method returns a poller. Calling result() on this poller returns a KeyVaultBackupResult containing information about the backup. Calling wait() on the poller will instead block until the operation is complete without returning an object.

Perform a full key restore

The KeyVaultBackupClient can be used to restore your entire collection of keys from a backup. The data source for a full key restore is a storage blob accessed using Shared Access Signature authentication. You will also need the URL of the backup (KeyVaultBackupResult.folder_url) from the above snippet.

SAS_TOKEN = os.environ["SAS_TOKEN"]

# `backup_result` is the KeyVaultBackupResult returned by `begin_backup`
client.begin_restore(backup_result.folder_url, sas_token=SAS_TOKEN).wait()
print("Vault restored successfully.")

Note that the begin_restore method returns a poller. Unlike the poller returned by begin_backup, this poller's result method returns None; therefore, calling wait() is functionally the same.

Perform a selective key restore

To restore a single key from a backed up vault instead of all keys, provide the key name as a key_name argument to the begin_restore method shown above.

Troubleshooting

See the azure-keyvault-administration troubleshooting guide for details on how to diagnose various failure scenarios.

General

Key Vault clients raise exceptions defined in azure-core. For example, if you try to get a role assignment that doesn't exist, KeyVaultAccessControlClient raises ResourceNotFoundError:

from azure.identity import DefaultAzureCredential
from azure.keyvault.administration import KeyVaultAccessControlClient
from azure.core.exceptions import ResourceNotFoundError

credential = DefaultAzureCredential()
client = KeyVaultAccessControlClient(vault_url="https://my-managed-hsm-name.managedhsm.azure.net/", credential=credential)

try:
    client.get_role_assignment("/", "which-does-not-exist")
except ResourceNotFoundError as e:
    print(e.message)

Clients from the Administration library can only be used to perform operations on a managed HSM, so attempting to do so on a Key Vault will raise an error.

Next steps

Several samples are available in the Azure SDK for Python GitHub repository. These samples provide example code for additional Key Vault scenarios:

Additional documentation

For more extensive documentation on Azure Key Vault, see the API reference documentation.

For more extensive documentation on Managed HSM, see the service documentation.

Contributing

This project welcomes contributions and suggestions. Most contributions require you to agree to a Contributor License Agreement (CLA) declaring that you have the right to, and actually do, grant us the rights to use your contribution. For details, visit https://cla.microsoft.com.

When you submit a pull request, a CLA-bot will automatically determine whether you need to provide a CLA and decorate the PR appropriately (e.g., label, comment). Simply follow the instructions provided by the bot. You will only need to do this once across all repos using our CLA.

This project has adopted the Microsoft Open Source Code of Conduct. For more information, see the Code of Conduct FAQ or contact opencode@microsoft.com with any additional questions or comments.

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