How-To: Configure the Azure cloud provider with Service Principal

The Azure provider allows you to deploy and connect to Azure resources from a self-hosted Radius Environment. It can be configured:

• Interactively via rad init
• Manually via rad env update and rad credential register

Prerequisites

• Azure subscription
• az CLI
• rad CLI

Interactive configuration

1. Initialize a new environment with rad init --full:

   rad init --full
   

2. Follow the prompts, specifying:

   • Namespace - The Kubernetes namespace where your application containers and networking resources will be deployed (different than the Radius control-plane namespace, radius-system)

   • Add an Azure provider

     1. Pick the subscription and resource group to deploy your Azure resources to
     2. Select the “Service Principal” option
     3. Run az ad sp create-for-rbac to create a Service Principal without a role assignment and obtain your appId, displayName, password, and tenant information.

        {
        "appId": "****",
        "displayName": "****",
        "password": "****",
        "tenant": "****"
        }
        ```
        Enter the `appId`, `password`, and `tenant` information when prompted.
     

   • Environment name - The name of the environment to create

   You should see the following output:

   Initializing Radius...
   
   ✅ Install Radius edge
      - Kubernetes cluster: k3d-k3s-default
      - Kubernetes namespace: radius-system
      - Azure service principal: ****
   ✅ Create new environment default
      - Kubernetes namespace: default
      - Azure: subscription ***** and resource group ***
   ✅ Scaffold application samples
   ✅ Update local configuration
   
   Initialization complete! Have a RAD time 😎
   

Manual configuration

1. Use rad env update to update your Radius Environment with your Azure subscription ID and Azure resource group:

   rad env update myEnvironment --azure-subscription-id myAzureSubscriptionId --azure-resource-group  myAzureResourceGroup
   

2. Run az ad sp create-for-rbac to create a Service Principal without a role assignment and obtain your appId, displayName, password, and tenant information.

   {
   "appId": "****",
   "displayName": "****",
   "password": "****",
   "tenant": "****"
   }
   

3. Use rad credential register azure to add the Azure service principal to your Radius installation:

   rad credential register azure sp --client-id myClientId  --client-secret myClientSecret  --tenant-id myTenantId
   

   Radius will use the provided service principal for all interactions with Azure, including Bicep and Recipe deployments.