Azure Key Vault Administration client library for Python

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

Source code | Package (PyPI) | Package (Conda) | API reference documentation | Product documentation | Samples

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 3.7 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 3.7 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
  • List all role definitions
  • Set, get, and delete a role definition
  • List all role assignments
  • Create, get, and delete a role assignment
• Backup and restore
  • Perform a full key backup
  • Perform a full key restore
  • Perform a selective key 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).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.

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).result()
print(f"Azure Storage Blob URL of the backup: {backup_result.folder_url}")

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.

Release History

4.4.0b2 (2023-11-03)

Features Added

• Added support for service API version 7.5-preview.1
• KeyVaultBackupClient.begin_backup and KeyVaultBackupClient.begin_restore now accept a use_managed_identity keyword-only argument to enable authentication via Managed Identity

Other Changes

• Key Vault API version 7.5-preview.1 is now the default

4.4.0b1 (2023-05-16)

Bugs Fixed

• Token requests made during AD FS authentication no longer specify an erroneous "adfs" tenant ID (#29888)

4.3.0 (2023-03-16)

Features Added

• Added support for service API version 7.4
• Clients each have a send_request method that can be used to send custom requests using the client's existing pipeline (#25172)
• (From 4.3.0b1) Added sync and async KeyVaultSettingsClients for getting and updating Managed HSM settings
• The KeyVaultSetting class has a getboolean method that will return the setting's value as a bool, if possible, and raise a ValueError otherwise

Breaking Changes

These changes do not impact the API of stable versions such as 4.2.0. Only code written against a beta version such as 4.3.0b1 may be affected.

• KeyVaultSettingsClient.update_setting now accepts a single setting argument (a KeyVaultSetting instance) instead of a name and value
• The KeyVaultSetting model's type parameter and attribute have been renamed to setting_type
• The SettingType enum has been renamed to KeyVaultSettingType

Other Changes

• Key Vault API version 7.4 is now the default
• (From 4.3.0b1) Python 3.6 is no longer supported. Please use Python version 3.7 or later.
• (From 4.3.0b1) Updated minimum azure-core version to 1.24.0
• (From 4.3.0b1) Dropped msrest requirement
• (From 4.3.0b1) Dropped six requirement
• (From 4.3.0b1) Added requirement for isodate>=0.6.1 (isodate was required by msrest)
• (From 4.3.0b1) Added requirement for typing-extensions>=4.0.1

4.3.0b1 (2022-11-15)

Features Added

• Added sync and async KeyVaultSettingsClients for getting and updating Managed HSM settings.
• Added support for service API version 7.4-preview.1

Other Changes

• Python 3.6 is no longer supported. Please use Python version 3.7 or later.
• Key Vault API version 7.4-preview.1 is now the default
• Updated minimum azure-core version to 1.24.0
• Dropped msrest requirement
• Dropped six requirement
• Added requirement for isodate>=0.6.1 (isodate was required by msrest)
• Added requirement for typing-extensions>=4.0.1

4.2.0 (2022-09-19)

Breaking Changes

• Clients verify the challenge resource matches the vault domain. This should affect few customers, who can provide verify_challenge_resource=False to client constructors to disable. See https://aka.ms/azsdk/blog/vault-uri for more information.

4.1.1 (2022-08-11)

Other Changes

• Documentation improvements (#25039)

4.1.0 (2022-03-28)

Features Added

• Key Vault API version 7.3 is now the default
• Added support for multi-tenant authentication when using azure-identity 1.8.0 or newer (#20698)

Other Changes

• (From 4.1.0b3) Python 2.7 is no longer supported. Please use Python version 3.6 or later.
• (From 4.1.0b3) Updated minimum azure-core version to 1.20.0
• (From 4.1.0b2) To support multi-tenant authentication, get_token calls during challenge authentication requests now pass in a tenant_id keyword argument (#20698). See https://aka.ms/azsdk/python/identity/tokencredential for more details on how to integrate this parameter if get_token is implemented by a custom credential.

4.1.0b3 (2022-02-08)

Other Changes

• Python 2.7 is no longer supported. Please use Python version 3.6 or later.
• Updated minimum azure-core version to 1.20.0
• (From 4.1.0b2) To support multi-tenant authentication, get_token calls during challenge authentication requests now pass in a tenant_id keyword argument (#20698)

4.1.0b2 (2021-11-11)

Features Added

• Added support for multi-tenant authentication when using azure-identity 1.7.1 or newer (#20698)

Other Changes

• Updated minimum azure-core version to 1.15.0

4.1.0b1 (2021-09-09)

Features Added

• Key Vault API version 7.3-preview is now the default

4.0.0 (2021-06-22)

Changed

• Key Vault API version 7.2 is now the default
• KeyVaultAccessControlClient.delete_role_assignment and .delete_role_definition no longer raise an error when the resource to be deleted is not found
• Raised minimum azure-core version to 1.11.0

Added

• KeyVaultAccessControlClient.set_role_definition accepts an optional assignable_scopes keyword-only argument

Breaking Changes

• KeyVaultAccessControlClient.delete_role_assignment and .delete_role_definition return None
• Changed parameter order in KeyVaultAccessControlClient.set_role_definition. permissions is now an optional keyword-only argument
• Renamed BackupOperation to KeyVaultBackupResult, and removed all but its folder_url property
• Removed RestoreOperation and SelectiveKeyRestoreOperation classes
• Removed KeyVaultBackupClient.begin_selective_restore. To restore a single key, pass the key's name to KeyVaultBackupClient.begin_restore:

  # before (4.0.0b3):
  client.begin_selective_restore(folder_url, sas_token, key_name)
  
  # after:
  client.begin_restore(folder_url, sas_token, key_name=key_name)
  

• Removed KeyVaultBackupClient.get_backup_status and .get_restore_status. Use the pollers returned by KeyVaultBackupClient.begin_backup and .begin_restore to check whether an operation has completed
• KeyVaultRoleAssignment's principal_id, role_definition_id, and scope are now properties of a properties property

  # before (4.0.0b3):
  print(KeyVaultRoleAssignment.scope)
  
  # after:
  print(KeyVaultRoleAssignment.properties.scope)
  

• Renamed KeyVaultPermission properties:
  • allowed_actions -> actions
  • denied_actions -> not_actions
  • allowed_data_actions -> data_actions
  • denied_data_actions -> denied_data_actions
• Renamed argument role_assignment_name to name in KeyVaultAccessControlClient.create_role_assignment, .delete_role_assignment, and .get_role_assignment
• Renamed argument role_definition_name to name in KeyVaultAccessControlClient.delete_role_definition and .get_role_definition
• Renamed argument role_scope to scope in KeyVaultAccessControlClient methods

4.0.0b3 (2021-02-09)

Added

• KeyVaultAccessControlClient supports managing custom role definitions

Breaking Changes

• Renamed KeyVaultBackupClient.begin_full_backup() to .begin_backup()
• Renamed KeyVaultBackupClient.begin_full_restore() to .begin_restore()
• Renamed BackupOperation.azure_storage_blob_container_uri to .folder_url
• Renamed id property of BackupOperation, RestoreOperation, and SelectiveKeyRestoreOperation to job_id
• Renamed blob_storage_uri parameters of KeyVaultBackupClient.begin_restore() and .begin_selective_restore() to folder_url
• Removed redundant folder_name parameter from KeyVaultBackupClient.begin_restore() and .begin_selective_restore() (the folder_url parameter contains the folder name)
• Renamed KeyVaultPermission attributes:
  • actions -> allowed_actions
  • data_actions -> allowed_data_actions
  • not_actions -> denied_actions
  • not_data_actions -> denied_data_actions
• Renamed KeyVaultRoleAssignment.assignment_id to .role_assignment_id
• Renamed KeyVaultRoleScope enum values:
  • global_value -> GLOBAL
  • keys_value -> KEYS

4.0.0b2 (2020-10-06)

Added

• KeyVaultBackupClient.get_backup_status and .get_restore_status enable checking the status of a pending operation by its job ID (#13718)

Breaking Changes

• The role_assignment_name parameter of KeyVaultAccessControlClient.create_role_assignment is now an optional keyword-only argument. When this argument isn't passed, the client will generate a name for the role assignment. (#13512)

4.0.0b1 (2020-09-08)

Added

• KeyVaultAccessControlClient performs role-based access control operations
• KeyVaultBackupClient performs full vault backup and full and selective restore operations