Create/Retrieve Secrets from Key Vault using Azure CLI

You can create and retrieve secrets stored in the Azure Key vault using the Azure Portal or command-line tools. This blog post will focus on creating a secret in the Azure Key Vault using Azure CLI and demonstrate how to retrieve it.

STEP 1 – Install Azure CLI

Before we begin, ensure that you have Azure CLI installed on your local system. If you don’t have it installed, you can download Azure CLI by clicking this link: https://aka.ms/installazurecliwindows.

To learn more about installing Azure CLI on Windows, please refer to the following link: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/cli/azure/install-azure-cli-windows?tabs=azure-cli.

Once you’ve downloaded the Azure CLI MSI file, double-click it to launch the installer. Then, follow the wizard’s instructions to complete the installation on your system.

• After Azure CLI installation is completed, Open the command prompt or Powershell and run az version command to verify if it’s installed and working fine.

STEP 2 – Authenticate with Azure using az login

To use Azure CLI and work with Azure Key Vault, you must log in and authenticate with your Azure account. You can run the “az login” command in your command prompt or terminal.

This will open a browser session where you can complete the authentication process by logging in with your administrator account.

STEP 3 – Create Azure Key Vault

The next step is to create an Azure Key Vault using the “az keyvault create” command. If you already have an Azure Key Vault created and want to add a secret to it, you can skip this step. Make sure to replace the example values with your desired naming convention.

az keyvault create --name "newKeyVaultUKSouth01" --resource-group "UkSouthRg" --location "UKSouth"

STEP 4 – Create Azure Key Vault Secret

You can use the az keyvault secret command to create an Azure Key Vault secret. Here is an example of creating an Azure Key Vault secret:

az keyvault secret set --vault-name "newKeyVaultUKSouth01" --name "SqlAdmin" --value "Jhne&(nol@jdn88HHG"

• You can confirm the successful creation of your secret in the Azure Key Vault by checking the Azure Portal.

STEP 5 – Retrieve Azure KeyVault Secret

To retrieve an Azure Key Vault secret, you can use the az keyvault secret show command. Refer to the example below to understand how to do this.

az keyvault secret show --name "SqlAdmin" --vault-name "newKeyVaultUKSouth01" --query "value"