Grant permissions to workspace managed identity

This article teaches you how to grant permissions to the managed identity in Azure synapse workspace. Permissions, in turn, allow access to dedicated SQL pools in the workspace and ADLS Gen2 storage account through the Azure portal.

Note

This workspace managed identity will be referred to as managed identity through the rest of this document.

Grant the managed identity permissions to ADLS Gen2 storage account

An ADLS Gen2 storage account is required to create an Azure Synapse workspace. To successfully launch Spark pools in Azure Synapse workspace, the Azure Synapse managed identity needs the Storage Blob Data Contributor role on this storage account . Pipeline orchestration in Azure Synapse also benefits from this role.

Grant permissions to managed identity during workspace creation

Azure Synapse will attempt to grant the Storage Blob Data Contributor role to the managed identity after you create the Azure Synapse workspace using Azure portal. You provide the ADLS Gen2 storage account details in the Basics tab.

Choose the ADLS Gen2 storage account and filesystem in Account name and File system name.

If the workspace creator is also Owner of the ADLS Gen2 storage account, then Azure Synapse will assign the Storage Blob Data Contributor role to the managed identity. You'll see the following message below the storage account details that you entered.

If the workspace creator isn't the owner of the ADLS Gen2 storage account, then Azure Synapse doesn't assign the Storage Blob Data Contributor role to the managed identity. The message appearing below the storage account details notifies the workspace creator that they don't have sufficient permissions to grant the Storage Blob Data Contributor role to the managed identity.

As the message states, you can't create Spark pools unless the Storage Blob Data Contributor is assigned to the managed identity.

Grant permissions to managed identity after workspace creation

During workspace creation, if you don't assign the Storage Blob Data contributor to the managed identity, then the Owner of the ADLS Gen2 storage account manually assigns that role to the identity. The following steps will help you to accomplish manual assignment.

Step 1: Navigate to the ADLS Gen2 storage account in Azure portal

In Azure portal, open the ADLS Gen2 storage account and select Overview from the left navigation. You'll only need to assign The Storage Blob Data Contributor role at the container or filesystem level. Select Containers.

Step 2: Select the container

The managed identity should have data access to the container (file system) that was provided when the workspace was created. You can find this container or file system in Azure portal. Open the Azure Synapse workspace in Azure portal and select the Overview tab from the left navigation.

Select that same container or file system to grant the Storage Blob Data Contributor role to the managed identity.

Step 3: Open Access control and add role assignment

1. Select Access control (IAM).

2. Select Add > Add role assignment to open the Add role assignment page.

3. Assign the following role. For detailed steps, see Assign Azure roles using the Azure portal.

   Setting	Value
   Role	Storage Blob Contributor
   Assign access to	MANAGEDIDENTITY
   Members	managed identity name

   Note

   The managed identity name is also the workspace name.

   

4. Select Save to add the role assignment.

Step 4: Verify that the Storage Blob Data Contributor role is assigned to the managed identity

Select Access Control(IAM) and then select Role assignments.

You should see your managed identity listed under the Storage Blob Data Contributor section with the Storage Blob Data Contributor role assigned to it.

Next steps

Learn more about Workspace managed identity