Storage credentials
Applies to: 
Databricks SQL Databricks Runtime Unity Catalog only
Unity Catalog and the built-in Azure Databricks Hive metastore use default locations for managed tables. Unity Catalog introduces several new securable objects to grant privileges to data in cloud object storage.
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A Unity Catalog object used to abstract long term credentials from cloud storage providers.
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A Unity Catalog object used to associate a cloud object storage URI with a storage credential.
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A Unity Catalog table created in a Unity Catalog-managed external location.
Storage credential
A storage credential is a securable object representing an Azure managed identity or Microsoft Entra ID service principal.
Once a storage credential is created access to it can be granted to principals (users and groups).
Storage credentials are primarily used to create external locations, which scope access to a specific storage path.
Storage credential names are unqualified and must be unique within the metastore.
Graphical Representation of relationships
The following diagram describes the relationship between:
- storage credentials
- external locations
- external tables
- storage paths
- IAM entities
- Azure service accounts
Examples
Using CLI create a storage credential my_azure_storage_cred for a Microsoft Entra ID service principal.
databricks storage-credentials create --json '{"name": "my_azure_storage_cred", "azure_service_principal": {"directory_id": "12345678-9abc-def0-1234-56789abcdef0", "application_id": "23456789-9abc-def0-1234-56789abcdef0", "client_secret": "Cli3nt5ecr3t"}}'
The rest of the commands can be run within SQL.
-- Grant access to the storage credential
> GRANT READ FILES ON STORAGE CREDENTIAL my_azure_storage_cred TO ceo;
-- ceo can directly read from any storage path using myazure_storage_cred
> SELECT count(1) FROM `delta`.`abfss://container@storageaccount.dfs.core.windows.net/depts/finance/forecast/somefile` WITH (CREDENTIAL my_azure_storage_cred);
100
> SELECT count(1) FROM `delta`.`abfss://container@storageaccount.dfs.core.windows.net/depts/hr/employees` WITH (CREDENTIAL my_azure_storage_cred);
2017
-- Create an external location on specific path to which `my_azure_storage_cred` has access
> CREATE EXTERNAL LOCATION finance_loc URL 'abfss://container@storageaccount.dfs.core.windows.net/depts/finance'
WITH (CREDENTIAL my_azure_storage_cred)
COMMENT 'finance';