How do I authenticate using a managed identity from gitlab-ci to push a docker container from gitlab registry to Azure web service?

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I have researched the way to push docker images from gitlab container registry to an azure resource: Pushing Docker image from gitlab-ci to Azure Container Registry

I have also found the documentation to create managed identities (both system-assigned and user-assigned) in the Azure docs

I am missing to connect the dots on how I can use az login —-identity in a gitlab-ci.ymlfile to access an azure app service. The purpose is to push a docker image from gitlab container registry.

  • How can I do this?
  • How do I need to configure the azure app service (identity / access control)?
  • Are there any security concerns? If yes, is az login —-service-principal a more secure way to do this? Or any other authentication procedure? ssh?

Thank you for your help in advance!

azure-managed-identity gitlab gitlab-ci docker azure
1 Answers

You can use a GitLab CI Job JWT token to login to Azure from within a CI/CD pipeline without needing to store secrets in a GitLab project. In order to do this, you will also need to configure OpenID Connect (OIDC) for ID federation between GitLab and an Azure service principal. This is recommended by Microsoft for authenticating to Azure from CI/CD services, among other use cases.

Note: Using OIDC as described below will only work if you are using gitlab.com or a publicly reachable GitLab instance. This is because Azure needs to connect to the token issuer for the keys to validate the token. If you are self-hosting GitLab and your instance is not publicly accessible, you can choose a different credential type for step 2.

1. Create a registered app

First, you will need to register an Application in Azure. You can do this by following these instructions to register an application and create a service principal.

After doing this, make note of the values for Application (client) ID and Directory (tenant) ID (found in the application Overview pane). These values will be needed for step 3.

2. Add the federated credentials

Once your app is registered, you can add federated credentials to the application's service principal. In the Azure portal, go to registered apps -> your application. In the sidebar, select Certificates & secrets. Under the Federated credentials tab, click the "Add credential" button

Use the following parameters for the credential configuration:

Federated credential sceanrio: Other issuer
Issuer: your gitlab URL e.g. https://gitlab.example.com
Subject Identifier: The value of the sub claim to match. For example, to allow jobs on the main branch of the contoso/myproject project to use this service principal, use project_path:contoso/myproject:ref_type:branch:ref:main
Name: Any descriptive name for the federated credental (e.g. contoso-myproject-main)
Description: Optional, a description for the federated credential.
Audience: your GitLab URL e.g. https://gitlab.example.com

3. Authenticate to Azure in your job

After the federated credentials are created, you can leverage the CI_JOB_JWT_V2 token in your job to authenticate with Azure. In this example, we'll use the Azure CLI (az login).

azure-cli:
  image: mcr.microsoft.com/azure-cli
  variables:
    AZURE_CLIENT_ID: "YOUR Application Client ID"
    AZURE_TENANT_ID: "YOUR TENANT ID"
  script:
    - az login --tenant $AZURE_TENANT_ID --service-principal -u $AZURE_CLIENT_ID --federated-token $CI_JOB_JWT_V2
    # now you are logged into Azure and can take other actions using the CLI
    # - az resource list # example
  • CI_JOB_JWT_V2: Predefined variable
  • AZURE_CLIENT_ID: The Application (Client) ID of the registered application.
  • AZURE_TENANT_ID: The ID of the Azure Tenant to login to (can be found in the application overview)

Also, don't forget to grant your registered app appropriate permissions for Azure container registry

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