An Azure DevOps pipeline unavoidably uses confidential information such as usernames and passwords which need to be protected from unauthorised access and alteration. Azure DevOps enables this by allowing your Pipeline to reference variables stored in a Variable Group which itself can be configure in one of two ways, each approach described in detail the sections below.
Define your variables in a Variable Group and protect selected (sensitive) variables by marking each of them as Secret, or
Protect all variables by storing them in as Secrets in an Azure Key Vault and defining a Variable Group linked to that Key Vault.
How many Variable Groups should you create?
We recommend creating a Variable Group per DataStage Engine.
For DevOps scenarios this usually involves customers creating one Variable Group for each non-production environment (e.g. DEV and QA), and one for their production environment (assuming they use Azure DevOps to deploy to production)
For DataStage upgrade scenarios most customers create…
one Variable Group for each non-production legacy environment,
one Variable Group for each non-production target environment, where upgrade acceptance testing will take place,
one Variable Groups for each production legacy environment, if they want to use Azure DevOps to deploy to their legacy production environment while they plan their cutover
Create a Variable Group including secret variables
In your project in Azure DevOps select Pipeline → Library → + Variable Group.
Give your variable group a name, description, and add the values you need in your pipeline. Do not select the Link secrets from an Azure key vault as variables toggle.
The variables you need to add to support the example Azure Pipelines shipped with MettleCI are described below (using the Azure CLI to describe them):
# Describe all the Variable Groups used for Data Migrators demos $> az pipelines variable-group list --query-order Asc --output table ID Name Type Description Number of Variables ---- --------------- ------ ----------------------------------- --------------------- 1 demo117_NONPROD Vsts DataStage Demo v11.7 Non-Production 10 2 demo115_NONPROD Vsts DataStage Demo v11.5 Non-production 10 3 demo117_PROD Vsts DataStage Demo v11.7 Production 10 4 demo115_PROD Vsts DataStage Demo v11.5 Production 10 # Get the variables in the Variable Group we're interested in (Group 1, demo117_NONPROD) $> az pipelines variable-group variable list --group-id 1 --output table Name Is Secret Value -------------- ----------- ----------------------------------------------------- ComplianceRepo False ADO-Compliance DomainName False demo117-svcs.your-org.com:59445 EngineName False demo117-engn.your-org.com IISPassword True IISUsername False isadmin MCIPassword True MCIUsername False mciworkb MettleHome False /opt/dm/mci ProjectName False wwi_azure_ds117 IISVersion False 11.7
Create a Variable Group based on an Azure Key Vault
Microsoft have good documentation on creating an Azure Key Vault which we recommend you consult.
Ensure you…
Create a Key Vault: Create one Key Vault per Variable Group. See our advice above on how may variable groups to create.
Attach an Access Policy: This must provides the Get and List permissions for Secrets.
Attach a Service Principal: This is simply an identity created for your application. You can create the service principal by using Azure CLI (see an example at the bottom of this page), or use the service principal created if/when your application is registered in Azure AD.
Create a Variable Group linked to a Key Vault
Next, back in Azure DevOps, go to the Library within your Project and create a Variable Group. Make sure you select the Link secrets from an Azure key vault as variables toggle.
Click the Pipeline permissions tab and ensure that you give your pipeline permission to access this Variable Group:
Grant an Azure Pipeline access to your Variable Group
When executing your Pipeline for the first time you may see a prompt like this.
Click View then grant access on the dialog which appears.
Reference
Creating Azure assets using the Azure CLI
# Login to Azure and configure CLI defaults $> az login $> az account set --subscription MyAzureSubscription $> az config set defaults.location=mygeolocation # Setup DevOps CLI defaults $> az devops configure --defaults project=MyProject $> az devops configure --defaults organization=https://dev.azure.com/MyOrganization # Create a Resource Group to group our MettleCI-related resources $> az group create --name MettleCI # Create key vault $> az keyvault create \\n --name MyDataStageEnvironment \\n --resource-group MettleCI # Set a secret in the vault $> az keyvault secret set \\n --name "MyPassword" \\n --value "mysecretpassword" \\n --vault-name MettleCI # Create an Azure service principal called 'MettleCI' $> az ad sp create-for-rbac --name MettleCI