How to authenticate .NET apps to Azure services using the .NET Azure SDK

When an application needs to access an Azure resource such as storage, key vault, or cognitive services, the application must be authenticated to Azure. This is true for all applications, whether deployed to Azure, deployed on-premises, or under development on a local developer workstation. This article describes the recommended approaches to authenticate an app to Azure when using the Azure SDK for .NET.

It is recommended that apps use token-based authentication rather than connection strings when authenticating to Azure resources. The Azure SDK for .NET provides classes that support token-based authentication and allow apps to seamlessly authenticate to Azure resources whether the app is in local development, deployed to Azure, or deployed to an on-premises server.

The specific type of token-based authentication an app should use to authenticate to Azure resources depends on where the app is being run and is shown in the following diagram.

A diagram showing the recommended token-based authentication strategies for an app depending on where it's running.

  • When a developer is running an app during local development - The app can authenticate to Azure using either an application service principal for local development or by using the developer's Azure credentials. Each of these options is discussed in more detail in the section authentication during local development.
  • When an app is hosted on Azure - The app should authenticate to Azure resources using a managed identity. This option is discussed in more detail below in the section authentication in server environments.
  • When an app is hosted and deployed on-premises - The app should authenticate to Azure resources using an application service principal. This option is discussed in more detail below in the section authentication in server environments.

DefaultAzureCredential

The DefaultAzureCredential class provided by the Azure SDK allows apps to use different authentication methods depending on the environment they're run in. This allows apps to be promoted from local development to test environments to production without code changes. You configure the appropriate authentication method for each environment and DefaultAzureCredential will automatically detect and use that authentication method. The use of DefaultAzureCredential should be preferred over manually coding conditional logic or feature flags to use different authentication methods in different environments.

Details about using the DefaultAzureCredential class are covered later in this article in the section Use DefaultAzureCredential in an application.

Advantages of token-based authentication

Token-based authentication is strongly recommended over using connection strings when building apps for Azure. Token-based authentication offers the following advantages over authenticating with connection strings.

  • The token-based authentication methods described below allows you to establish the specific permissions needed by the app on the Azure resource. This follows the principle of least privilege. In contrast, a connection string grants full rights to the Azure resource.
  • Whereas anyone or any app with a connection string can connect to an Azure resource, token-based authentication methods scope access to the resource to only the app(s) intended to access the resource.
  • In the case of a managed identity, there is no application secret to store. This makes the app more secure because there's no connection string or application secret than can be compromised.
  • The Azure.Identity package in the Azure SDK manages tokens for you behind the scenes. This makes using token based authentication as easy to use as a connection string.

Use of connection strings should be limited to initial proof of concept apps or development prototypes that don't access production or sensitive data. Otherwise, the token-based authentication classes available in the Azure SDK should always be preferred when authenticating to Azure resources.

Authentication in server environments

When hosting in a server environment, each application should be assigned a unique application identity per environment the application is run in. In Azure, an app identity is represented by a service principal, a special type of security principal intended to identify and authenticate apps to Azure. The type of service principal to use for your app depends on where your app is running.

Authentication method Description
Apps hosted in Azure Apps hosted in Azure should use a Managed Identity service principal. Managed identities are designed to represent the identity of an app hosted in Azure and can only be used with Azure hosted apps.

For example, a .NET web app hosted in Azure App Service would be assigned a Managed Identity. The Managed Identity assigned to the app would then be used to authenticate the app to other Azure services.

Apps hosted outside of Azure
(for example on-premises apps)
Apps hosted outside of Azure (for example on-premises apps) that need to connect to Azure services should use an Application service principal. An Application service principal represents the identity of the app in Azure and is created through the application registration process.

For example, consider a .NET web app hosted on-premises that makes use of Azure Blob Storage. You would create an Application service principal for the app using the App registration process. The AZURE_CLIENT_ID, AZURE_TENANT_ID, and AZURE_CLIENT_SECRET would all be stored as environment variables to be read by the application at runtime and allow the app to authenticate to Azure using the Application service principal.

Authentication during local development

When an application is run on a developer's workstation during local development, it still must authenticate to any Azure services used by the app. The two main strategies for authenticating apps to Azure during local development are:

Authentication method Description
Create dedicated application service principal objects to be used during local development In this method, dedicated application service principal objects are set up using the App registration process for use during local development. The identity of the service principal is then stored as environment variables to be accessed by the app when it is run in local development.

This method allows you to assign the specific resource permissions needed by the app to the service principal objects used by developers during local development. This makes sure the application only has access to the specific resources it needs and replicates the permissions the app will have in production.

The downside of this approach is the need to create separate service principal objects for each developer that works on an application.

Authenticate the app to Azure using the developer's credentials during local development In this method, a developer must be signed in to Azure from either Visual Studio, the Azure Tools extension for VS Code, the Azure CLI, or Azure PowerShell on their local workstation. The application can then access the developer's credentials from the credential store and use those credentials to access Azure resources from the app.

This method has the advantage of easier setup since a developer only needs to log in to their Azure account from Visual Studio, VS Code, or the Azure CLI. The disadvantage of this approach is that the developer's account likely has more permissions than required by the application. Therefore, this approach doesn't accurately replicate the permissions the app will run with in production.

Use DefaultAzureCredential in an application

DefaultAzureCredential supports multiple authentication methods and determines the authentication method being used at runtime. In this way, your app can use different authentication methods in different environments without implementing environment specific code.

The order and locations in which DefaultAzureCredential looks for credentials is found at DefaultAzureCredential.

To implement DefaultAzureCredential, first add the Azure.Identity and optionally the Microsoft.Extensions.Azure packages to your application. You can do this using either the command line or the NuGet Package Manager.

Open a terminal environment of your choice in the application project directory and enter the command below.

dotnet add package Azure.Identity
dotnet add package Microsoft.Extensions.Azure

Azure services are generally accessed using corresponding client classes from the SDK. These classes and your own custom services should be registered in the Program.cs file so they can be accessed via dependency injection throughout your app. Inside of Program.cs, follow the steps below to correctly setup your service and DefaultAzureCredential.

  1. Include the Azure.Identity and Microsoft.Extensions.Azure namespaces with a using directive.
  2. Register the Azure service using relevant helper methods.
  3. Pass an instance of the DefaultAzureCredential object to the UseCredential method.

An example of this is shown in the following code segment.

using Microsoft.Extensions.Azure;
using Azure.Identity;

// Inside of Program.cs
builder.Services.AddAzureClients(x =>
{
    x.AddBlobServiceClient(new Uri("https://<account-name>.blob.core.windows.net"));
    x.UseCredential(new DefaultAzureCredential());
});

Alternatively, you can also utilize DefaultAzureCredential in your services more directly without the help of additional Azure registration methods, as seen below.

using Azure.Identity;

// Inside of Program.cs
builder.Services.AddSingleton<BlobServiceClient>(x =>
    new BlobServiceClient(
        new Uri("https://<account-name>.blob.core.windows.net"),
        new DefaultAzureCredential()));

When the above code is run on your local workstation during local development, it will look in the environment variables for an application service principal or at Visual Studio, VS Code, the Azure CLI, or Azure PowerShell for a set of developer credentials, either of which can be used to authenticate the app to Azure resources during local development.

When deployed to Azure this same code can also authenticate your app to other Azure resources. DefaultAzureCredential can retrieve environment settings and managed identity configurations to authenticate to other services automatically.

Exploring the sequence of DefaultAzureCredential authentication methods

Internally, DefaultAzureCredential implements a chain of credential providers for authenticating applications to Azure resources. Each credential provider is able to detect if credentials of that type are configured for the app. DefaultAzureCredential sequentially checks each provider in order and uses the credentials from the first provider that has credentials configured.

The order and locations in which DefaultAzureCredential looks for credentials is found at DefaultAzureCredential.

Credential type Description
Application service principal DefaultAzureCredential reads a set of environment variables to determine if an application service principal (application user) has been set for the app. If so, DefaultAzureCredential uses these values to authenticate the app to Azure.

This method is most often used in server environments but can also be used when developing locally.
Managed Identity If the application is deployed to an Azure host with Managed Identity enabled, DefaultAzureCredential will authenticate the app to Azure using that Managed Identity. Authentication using a Managed Identity is discussed in the Authentication in server environments section of this document.

This method is only available when an application is hosted in Azure using a service like Azure App Service, Azure Functions, or Azure Virtual Machines.
Visual Studio If the developer has authenticated to Azure by logging into Visual Studio, DefaultAzureCredential will authenticate the app to Azure using that same account.
Visual Studio Code If the developer has authenticated to Azure using the Visual Studio Code Azure Account plugin, DefaultAzureCredential will authenticate the app to Azure using that same account.
Azure CLI If a developer has authenticated to Azure using the az login command in the Azure CLI, DefaultAzureCredential will authenticate the app to Azure using that same account.
Azure PowerShell If a developer has authenticated to Azure using the Connect-AzAccount cmdlet from Azure PowerShell, DefaultAzureCredential will authenticate the app to Azure using that same account.
Interactive If enabled, DefaultAzureCredential will interactively authenticate the developer via the current system's default browser. By default, this option is disabled.