Manage control plane access to Azure Cosmos DB by using Azure role-based access control (RBAC)

Azure Cosmos DB is a globally distributed, multi-model database service offered by Microsoft Azure. It provides seamless scaling, high availability, and low latency for your applications. When working with Azure Cosmos DB, it’s essential to ensure that you have control over who can access and modify your database. Azure role-based access control (RBAC) enables you to manage access to your Azure resources, including Cosmos DB.

RBAC allows you to define fine-grained access policies, granting individuals the necessary permissions to perform specific actions on Cosmos DB resources. By carefully managing control plane access, you can restrict access to sensitive operations and maintain the security of your database. Let’s explore how you can manage control plane access to Azure Cosmos DB using RBAC.

Prerequisites

To get started, you’ll need an Azure subscription and an existing Cosmos DB account. If you don’t have a Cosmos DB account, you can create one using the Azure portal or Azure CLI.

Managing Control Plane Access Using RBAC

Follow these steps to manage control plane access to your Azure Cosmos DB account using RBAC:

1. Open the Azure portal and navigate to your Cosmos DB account.

2. Select the Access control (IAM) tab from the left-hand menu.

3. Click on the + Add button to add a new role assignment.

4. In the Add permissions pane, select the appropriate role for the user or group. Azure provides several built-in roles specifically designed for Cosmos DB, such as Cosmos DB Account Contributor and Cosmos DB Account Reader. These roles have different levels of access to the Cosmos DB resources.

5. Next, specify the user or group to assign the role to. You can select from existing users or groups in your Azure Active Directory (AD), or you can add external users by their email address.

6. After selecting the role and user/group, click on the Save button to create the role assignment.

By assigning different roles to users or groups, you can control the level of access they have to your Cosmos DB account.

Creating Custom Roles

Azure RBAC allows you to create custom roles tailored to your specific requirements. You can define granular permissions, limiting users to perform only the necessary operations on your Cosmos DB resources.

Here’s an example scenario: you want to create a custom role that allows users to read documents from a specific Cosmos DB collection but prevents them from modifying or deleting any data. Follow these steps:

1. Open the Azure portal and navigate to your Cosmos DB account.

2. Select the Access control (IAM) tab from the left-hand menu.

3. Click on the + Add button to add a new role assignment.

4. In the Add permissions pane, select the Custom role tab.

5. Click on Select a permission and choose the desired permissions for your custom role. In this case, select read-only permissions for the Cosmos DB data plane resource.

6. Specify the user or group to assign the custom role to and click on the Save button.

Once the custom role is created and assigned, users will only be able to read data from the specified Cosmos DB collection without being able to make any modifications.

Sample Role Assignment Using Azure PowerShell

Here is a sample HTML code block that demonstrates RBAC role assignment using Azure PowerShell:


az cosmosdb sql role assignment create --account-name --resource-group --scope /dbs//colls/ --role-definition-id b20abf8a-e4eb-4b2e-ac3b-3207c04d9f3b --principal-id


In this example, the cosmosdb-account represents the name of your Cosmos DB account, and resource-group-name represents the name of the resource group that contains your Cosmos DB account. and should be replaced with the actual names of your database and collection, respectively. The role-definition-id is the unique identifier for the desired RBAC role. should be replaced with the object ID of the user or group to whom the role is being assigned.

With Azure RBAC, you can effectively manage control plane access to Azure Cosmos DB, ensuring the security and integrity of your database resources.