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I would like to know if it is always recommended to use Managed Identities in Azure , mostly system assigned or a Service Principal? When should Service Principals be used in Azure compared to a managed identity, what is the advantage of one over the other? Any help would be appreciated.
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Managed identities provide an automatically managed identity in Azure Active Directory for applications to use when connecting to resources that support Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) authentication. Applications can use managed identities to obtain Azure AD tokens without having to manage any credentials.
An Azure service principal is an identity created for use with applications, hosted services, and automated tools to access Azure resources. This access is restricted by the roles assigned to the service principal, giving you control over which resources can be accessed and at which level.
The security principals are given permissions within the associated tenant, which define what a service/user is allowed to access. For a service, the security principal is called a service principal (and for a person, it is a user principal).
There are two types of managed identities: system-assigned and user-assigned. System-assigned managed identities have their lifecycle tied to the resource that created them. User-assigned managed identities can be used on multiple resources.
Internally, managed identities are service principals of a special type, which are locked to only be used with Azure resources. When the managed identity is deleted, the corresponding service principal is automatically removed. Also, when a User-Assigned or System-Assigned Identity is created, the Managed Identity Resource Provider (MSRP) issues a certificate internally to that identity.
Source: What are managed identities for Azure resources?
and
So what’s the difference?
Put simply, the difference between a managed identity and a service principal is that a managed identity manages the creation and automatic renewal of a service principal on your behalf.Source: What’s an Azure Service Principal and Managed Identity?
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