A very common task that i’m used to as a DevOps engineer working in the cloud, is resetting forgotten or lost passwords for server or database access. Although one of the best practices is to store passwords in a key management service, like Azure Key Vault, that i have covered in this post, people doesn’t always follow security best practices. But, there could be another common scenario where you’ll have to change the password every 3 or 6 months as a part of a password policy, for example the Azure SQL database Administrator password. There is a way to change the password using the Azure Portal that i’ll cover in a future, but today i’ll show you how to change the password quickly and easier from the Azure CLI, as a follow up from the “How to create and configure Azure SQL Database using Azure CLI” post.
Prerequisites
- Azure account
- Azure SQL database
Reset Administrator account password
Step 1. Open Terminal and login to the Azure Portal:
az login
It will open a new window using the default browser where you will be prompted for email and password.
Step 2. Type the following command:
az sql server update --name "devcoopsdbserver" --resource-group "azure-sql-db-rg" --admin-password "<insert_new_admin_password_here>"
Parameters:
--name: name of the database server.--resource-group: name of the database server resource group.--admin-password: new password for the database admin user.
Note: You could write the command in a script and run it as a cronjob.
Conclusion
Periodically resetting the Azure SQL Administrator account password could lead us to an automation scenario. This can be quite useful when there is a password policy that apply to the Administrator account. Always use automation when possible.