how to add an azure role assignment

• Adding or removing role assignments using Azure Portal

Go back to AZ-304 Tutorials

In this article you will learn about assigning roles using Azure portal and the process of adding and removing role assignments. 

However, Azure’s role-based access control (RBAC) refers to the authorization system for managing access to Azure resources. And, to grant access, you assign roles to users, groups, service principals, or managed identities at a particular scope. 

Prerequisites

For adding or removing role assignments, you must have:

• Firstly, Microsoft.Authorization/roleAssignments/write 
• Secondly, Microsoft.Authorization/roleAssignments/delete permissions, such as User Access Administrator or Owner

Access control (IAM)

Access control (IAM) is the page that is for assigning roles to grant access to Azure resources. It’s also known as identity and access management and appears in several locations in the Azure portal. There are questions for assigning roles to help in understanding about the Access control (IAM) page.

• Who needs access? This refers to a user, group, service principal, or managed identity. 
• What role do they need? Permissions are grouped together into roles, so you can select from a list of several built-in roles orcan use custom roles.
• Where do they need access? This refers to the set of resources that the access applies to. However, “where” can be a management group, subscription, resource group, or a single resource such as a storage account.

Adding a role assignment

• Firstly, in the Azure portal, click All services and then select the scope that you want to grant access to. 
• Secondly, click the specific resource for that scope.
• Then, Click Access control (IAM).
• Fourthly, click the Role assignments tab for viewing the role assignments at this scope.
• After that, click Add > Add role assignment. However, if you don’t have permissions to assign roles, the Add role assignment option will be disabled.

• Then, in the Role drop-down list, select a role such as Virtual Machine Contributor.
• There in the Select list, select a user, group, service principal, or managed identity. And, if you don’t see the security principal in the list, you can type in the Select box to search the directory for display names, email addresses, and object identifiers.
• Lastly, click Save to assign the role.

Assigning a user as an administrator of a subscription

For giving users the role of an administrator of an Azure subscription, first assign them the Owner role at the subscription scope. As the Owner role gives the user full access to all resources in the subscription, including the permission to grant access to others. However, these steps are the same as any other role assignment.

• Firstly, in the Azure portal, click All services and then Subscriptions.
• Then, click the subscription where you want to grant access.
• Thirdly, click Access control (IAM).
• After that, click the Role assignments tab to view the role assignments for this subscription.
• Then, click Add > Add role assignment. However, if you don’t have permissions to assign roles, the Add role assignment option will be disabled.
• And, in the Role drop-down list, select the Owner role.
• Then, in the Select list, select a user.

Adding a role assignment for a managed identity

For adding role assignments for a managed identity use the Access control (IAM) page. However, when you use the Access control (IAM) page, you start with the scope and then select the managed identity and role. In this section, you will learn about an alternate way to add role assignments for a managed identity. Using these steps, you start with the managed identity and then select the scope and role.

System-assigned managed identity

• Use these steps for assigning a role to a system-assigned managed identity by starting with the managed identity.
• Firstly, in the Azure portal, open a system-assigned managed identity. Then, in the left menu, click Identity.

• After that, under Permissions, click Azure role assignments. However, if roles are already assigned to the selected system-assigned managed identity then you will see the list of role assignments.
• For changing the subscription, click the Subscription list. Then, click Add role assignment.
• Then, use the drop-down lists to select the set of resources that the role assignment applies to such as Subscription, Resource group, or resource. And, if you don’t have role assignment write permissions for the selected scope, an inline message will be displayed.
• After that, in the Role drop-down list, select a role such as Virtual Machine Contributor.

User-assigned managed identity

• Use these steps for assigning a role to a user-assigned managed identity by starting with the managed identity.
• Firstly, in the Azure portal, open a user-assigned managed identity. Then, in the left menu, click Identity.
• After that, under Permissions, click Azure role assignments. However, if roles are already assigned to the selected user-assigned managed identity then you will see the list of role assignments.

Removing a role assignment

In Azure RBAC, for removing access from an Azure resource, you first remove a role assignment. Use these steps to remove a role assignment.

• Firstly, Open Access control (IAM) at a scope, such as management group, subscription, resource group, or resource, where you want to remove access.
• Then, click the Role assignments tab to view all the role assignments for this subscription.
• After that, in the list of role assignments, add a checkmark next to the security principal with the role assignment you want to remove.
• Then, Click Remove.
• Lastly, in the remove role assignment message that appears, click Yes.

However, if you see a message that inherited role assignments cannot be removed, then you are trying to remove a role assignment at a child scope. So, you should open Access control (IAM) at the scope where the role was assigned and try again. 

Reference: Microsoft Documentation

Prepare for Assured Success

Manage Azure Role Assignments Like a Pro with PowerShell

Today’s blog post is a little bit different. I have a couple of examples of how you can use PowerShell snippets and simple commandlets to get or set role assignmnets in your Azure Subscriptions.

PowerShell examples for managing Azure Role assignments

List all role assignments in a subscription, get all role assignments for a specific resource group, get all role assignments for a specific user, add a role assignment to a user, remove a role assignment for a user, remove all role assignments for a specific user, list all built-in roles, list all custom roles, create a custom role, update a custom role, delete a custom role, list all users or groups assigned to a specific role, list all permissions granted by a specific role, list all resource groups that a user has access to, create a role assignment for a service principal, powershell script to manage azure role assignments.

And now there is a script that combines some of these examples into one usable function:

I hope this was useful. Let me know if you liked the format of this blog and if you want me to include more of these examples.

Vukasin Terzic

Recent Update

• Writing your first Azure Terraform Configuration
• Transition from ARM Templates to Terraform with AI
• Getting started with Terraform for Azure
• Terraform Configuration Essentials: File Types, State Management, and Provider Selection
• Dynamically Managing Azure NSG Rules with PowerShell

Trending Tags

Retrieve azure resource group cost with powershell api.

The Future Of Azure Governance: Trends and Predictions

Further Reading

In my previous blog posts, I wrote about how simple PowerShell scripts can help speed up daily tasks for Azure administrators, and how you can convert them to your own API. One of these tasks is...

Azure Cost Optimization: 30 Ways to Save Money and Increase Efficiency

As organizations continue to migrate their applications and workloads to the cloud, managing and controlling cloud costs has become an increasingly critical issue. While Azure provides a robust s...

Custom PowerShell API for Azure Naming Policy

To continue our PowerShell API series, we have another example of a highly useful API that you can integrate into your environment. Choosing names for Azure resources can be a challenging task. ...

Azure RBAC: role assignments and ARM templates

This post is about Azure's role assignments and ARM templates. Role assignments can be thought of as "permissions for Azure".

If you're deploying to Azure, there's a good chance you're using ARM templates to do so. Once you've got past "Hello World", you'll probably find yourself in a situation when you're deploying multiple types of resource to make your solution. For instance, you may be deploying an App Service alongside Key Vault and Storage .

One of the hardest things when it comes to deploying software and having it work, is permissions. Without adequate permissions configured, the most beautiful code can do nothing . Incidentally, this is a good thing. We're deploying to the web; many people are there, not all good. As a different kind of web-head once said:

Azure has great power and suggests you use it wisely .

Access management for cloud resources is critical for any organization that uses the cloud. Azure role-based access control (Azure RBAC) helps you manage who has access to Azure resources, what they can do with those resources, and what areas they have access to. Designating groups or individual roles responsible for specific functions in Azure helps avoid confusion that can lead to human and automation errors that create security risks. Restricting access based on the need to know and least privilege security principles is imperative for organizations that want to enforce security policies for data access.

This is good advice. With that in mind, how can we ensure that the different resources we're deploying to Azure can talk to one another?

Role (up for your) assignments ​

The answer is roles. There's a number of roles that exist in Azure that can be assigned to users, groups, service principals and managed identities. In our own case we're using managed identity for our resources. What we can do is use "role assignments" to give our managed identity access to given resources. Arturo Lucatero gives a great short explanation of this:

Whilst this explanation is delightfully simple, the actual implementation when it comes to ARM templates is a little more involved. Because now it's time to talk "magic" GUIDs. Consider the following truncated ARM template, which gives our managed identity (and hence our App Service which uses this identity) access to Key Vault and Storage:

Let's take a look at these three variables:

The three variables above contain the subscription resource ids for the roles Storage Blob Data Contributor , Key Vault Secrets Officer and Key Vault Crypto Officer . The first question on your mind is likely: "what is ba92f5b4-2d11-453d-a403-e96b0029c9fe and where does it come from?" Great question! Well, each of these GUIDs represents a built-in role in Azure RBAC. The ba92f5b4-2d11-453d-a403-e96b0029c9fe represents the Storage Blob Data Contributor role.

How can I look these up? Well, there's two ways; there's an article which documents them here or you could crack open the Cloud Shell and look up a role by GUID like so:

Or by name like so:

As you can see, the Actions section of the output above (and in even more detail on the linked article ) provides information about what the different roles can do. So if you're looking to enable one Azure resource to talk to another, you should be able to refer to these to identify a role that you might want to use.

Creating a role assignment ​

So now we understand how you identify the roles in question, let's take the final leap and look at assigning those roles to our managed identity. For each role assignment, you'll need a roleAssignments resource defined that looks like this:

Let's go through the above, significant property by significant property (it's also worth checking the official reference here ):

• type - the type of role assignment we want to create, for a key vault it's "Microsoft.KeyVault/vaults/providers/roleAssignments" , for storage it's "Microsoft.Storage/storageAccounts/providers/roleAssignments" . The pattern is that it's the resource type, followed by "/providers/roleAssignments" .
• dependsOn - before we can create a role assignment, we need the service principal we desire to permission (in our case a managed identity) to exist
• properties.roleDefinitionId - the role that we're assigning, provided as an id. So for this example it's the keyVaultCryptoOfficer variable, which was earlier defined as [subscriptionResourceId('Microsoft.Authorization/roleDefinitions', 'ba92f5b4-2d11-453d-a403-e96b0029c9fe')] . (Note the use of the GUID)
• properties.principalId - the id of the principal we're adding permissions for. In our case this is a managed identity (a type of service principal).
• properties.scope - we're modifying another resource; our key vault isn't defined in this ARM template and we want to specify the resource we're granting permissions to.
• properties.principalType - the type of principal that we're creating an assignment for; in our this is "ServicePrincipal" - our managed identity.

There is an alternate approach that you can use where the type is "Microsoft.Authorization/roleAssignments" . Whilst this also works, it displayed errors in the Azure tooling for VS Code . As such, we've opted not to use that approach in our ARM templates.

Many thanks to the awesome John McCormick who wrangled permissions with me until we bent Azure RBAC to our will.

• Role (up for your) assignments
• Creating a role assignment

This browser is no longer supported.

Upgrade to Microsoft Edge to take advantage of the latest features, security updates, and technical support.

Assign Azure roles using Azure PowerShell

• 13 contributors

Azure role-based access control (Azure RBAC) is the authorization system you use to manage access to Azure resources. To grant access, you assign roles to users, groups, service principals, or managed identities at a particular scope. This article describes how to assign roles using Azure PowerShell.

We recommend that you use the Azure Az PowerShell module to interact with Azure. To get started, see Install Azure PowerShell . To learn how to migrate to the Az PowerShell module, see Migrate Azure PowerShell from AzureRM to Az .

Prerequisites

To assign roles, you must have:

• Microsoft.Authorization/roleAssignments/write permissions, such as Role Based Access Control Administrator
• PowerShell in Azure Cloud Shell or Azure PowerShell
• The account you use to run the PowerShell command must have the Microsoft Graph Directory.Read.All permission.

Steps to assign an Azure role

To assign a role consists of three elements: security principal, role definition, and scope.

Step 1: Determine who needs access

You can assign a role to a user, group, service principal, or managed identity. To assign a role, you might need to specify the unique ID of the object. The ID has the format: 11111111-1111-1111-1111-111111111111 . You can get the ID using the Azure portal or Azure PowerShell.

For a Microsoft Entra user, get the user principal name, such as [email protected] or the user object ID. To get the object ID, you can use Get-AzADUser .

For a Microsoft Entra group, you need the group object ID. To get the object ID, you can use Get-AzADGroup .

Service principal

For a Microsoft Entra service principal (identity used by an application), you need the service principal object ID. To get the object ID, you can use Get-AzADServicePrincipal . For a service principal, use the object ID and not the application ID.

Managed identity

For a system-assigned or a user-assigned managed identity, you need the object ID. To get the object ID, you can use Get-AzADServicePrincipal .

Step 2: Select the appropriate role

Permissions are grouped together into roles. You can select from a list of several Azure built-in roles or you can use your own custom roles. It's a best practice to grant access with the least privilege that is needed, so avoid assigning a broader role.

To list roles and get the unique role ID, you can use Get-AzRoleDefinition .

Here's how to list the details of a particular role.

For more information, see List Azure role definitions .

Step 3: Identify the needed scope

Azure provides four levels of scope: resource, resource group , subscription, and management group . It's a best practice to grant access with the least privilege that is needed, so avoid assigning a role at a broader scope. For more information about scope, see Understand scope .

Resource scope

For resource scope, you need the resource ID for the resource. You can find the resource ID by looking at the properties of the resource in the Azure portal. A resource ID has the following format.

Resource group scope

For resource group scope, you need the name of the resource group. You can find the name on the Resource groups page in the Azure portal or you can use Get-AzResourceGroup .

Subscription scope

For subscription scope, you need the subscription ID. You can find the ID on the Subscriptions page in the Azure portal or you can use Get-AzSubscription .

Management group scope

For management group scope, you need the management group name. You can find the name on the Management groups page in the Azure portal or you can use Get-AzManagementGroup .

Step 4: Assign role

To assign a role, use the New-AzRoleAssignment command. Depending on the scope, the command typically has one of the following formats.

Assign role examples

Assign a role for all blob containers in a storage account resource scope.

Assigns the Storage Blob Data Contributor role to a service principal with object ID 55555555-5555-5555-5555-555555555555 and Application ID 66666666-6666-6666-6666-666666666666 at a resource scope for a storage account named storage12345 .

Assign a role for a specific blob container resource scope

Assigns the Storage Blob Data Contributor role to a service principal with object ID 55555555-5555-5555-5555-555555555555 and Application ID 66666666-6666-6666-6666-666666666666 at a resource scope for a blob container named blob-container-01 .

Assign a role for a group in a specific virtual network resource scope

Assigns the Virtual Machine Contributor role to the Pharma Sales Admins group with ID aaaaaaaa-aaaa-aaaa-aaaa-aaaaaaaaaaaa at a resource scope for a virtual network named pharma-sales-project-network .

Assign a role for a user at a resource group scope

Assigns the Virtual Machine Contributor role to [email protected] user at the pharma-sales resource group scope.

Alternately, you can specify the fully qualified resource group with the -Scope parameter:

Assign a role for a user using the unique role ID at a resource group scope

There are a couple of times when a role name might change, for example:

• You are using your own custom role and you decide to change the name.
• You are using a preview role that has (Preview) in the name. When the role is released, the role is renamed.

Even if a role is renamed, the role ID does not change. If you are using scripts or automation to create your role assignments, it's a best practice to use the unique role ID instead of the role name. Therefore, if a role is renamed, your scripts are more likely to work.

The following example assigns the Virtual Machine Contributor role to the [email protected] user at the pharma-sales resource group scope.

Assign a role for an application at a resource group scope

Assigns the Virtual Machine Contributor role to an application with service principal object ID 77777777-7777-7777-7777-777777777777 at the pharma-sales resource group scope.

Assign a role for a user at a subscription scope

Assigns the Reader role to the [email protected] user at a subscription scope.

Assign a role for a user at a management group scope

Assigns the Billing Reader role to the [email protected] user at a management group scope.

• List Azure role assignments using Azure PowerShell
• Tutorial: Grant a group access to Azure resources using Azure PowerShell
• Manage resources with Azure PowerShell

Was this page helpful?

Additional resources

• Stack Overflow for Teams Where developers & technologists share private knowledge with coworkers
• Advertising & Talent Reach devs & technologists worldwide about your product, service or employer brand
• OverflowAI GenAI features for Teams
• OverflowAPI Train & fine-tune LLMs
• Labs The future of collective knowledge sharing
• About the company Visit the blog

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

Find centralized, trusted content and collaborate around the technologies you use most.

Q&A for work

Connect and share knowledge within a single location that is structured and easy to search.

Get early access and see previews of new features.

multiple roles in a resource block for azurerm_role_assignment

I am new to Terraform and learning. I have to provide two roles in a resource block(builtin and custom), is this supported in terraform?

I am already using for_each to pull in a list of principal_ids within the resource block, so I am wondering if there is a way to set this in a loop, so both the roles are applicable to the concerned principal_id.

I am unable to see any good example where there are multiple roles in a resource block.. Any suggestions?

2 Answers 2

role_definition_name should be string ,not a list. You can try the following:

The exact form depends on how local.principal_ids defined, but sadly you are not providing such information in the question.

• you are correct –  Vaishnav Commented Feb 20, 2022 at 18:32

role_definition_name cant be a list, so you have to update your code:

Your Answer

Reminder: Answers generated by artificial intelligence tools are not allowed on Stack Overflow. Learn more

Sign up or log in

Post as a guest.

Required, but never shown

By clicking “Post Your Answer”, you agree to our terms of service and acknowledge you have read our privacy policy .

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged azure kubernetes terraform azure-rm or ask your own question .

• The Overflow Blog
• The evolution of full stack engineers
• One of the best ways to get value for AI coding tools: generating tests
• Featured on Meta
• Join Stack Overflow’s CEO and me for the first Stack IRL Community Event in...
• User activation: Learnings and opportunities
• Staging Ground Reviewer Motivation
• What does a new user need in a homepage experience on Stack Overflow?

Hot Network Questions

• "Truth Function" v.s. "Truth-Functional"
• Should I write an email to a Latino teacher working in the US in English or Spanish?
• jq - ip addr show in tabular format
• Is it possible for one wing to stall due to icing while the other wing doesn't ice?
• Electrical panel not sending 240
• Was Willy Wonka correct when he accused Charlie of stealing Fizzy Lifting Drinks?
• How much technological progress could a group of modern people make in a century?
• Text processing: Filter & re-publish HTML table
• Is it feasible to create an online platform to effectively teach college-level math (abstract algebra, real analysis, etc.)?
• Is this a misstatement of Euclid in Halmos' Naive Set Theory book?
• How to make conditions work in Which?
• The quest for a Wiki-less Game
• How to prove that the Greek cross tiles the plane?
• How did NASA know figure out when and where the Apollo capsule would touch down on the ocean?
• How to respond to subtle racism in the lab?
• How should I deal with interior door jambs that are narrower than the wall?
• What came of the Trump campaign's complaint to the FEC that Harris 'stole' (or at least illegally received) Biden's funding?
• Can anyone ID this bike? NSW, Australia
• Navigating career options after a disastrous PhD performance and a disappointed advisor?
• A journal has published an AI-generated article under my name. What to do?
• LaTeX labels propositions as Theorems in text instead of Propositions
• Practice test paper answers all seem incorrect, but provider insists they are ... what am i missing?
• Correct syntax to add WMTS to Leaflet map
• Paying a parking fine when I don't trust the recipient