AWS Secrets Manager Backend

To enable Secrets Manager, specify SecretsManagerBackend as the backend in [secrets] section of airflow.cfg. These backend_kwargs are parsed as JSON, hence Python values like the bool False or None will be ignored, taking for those kwargs the default values of the secrets backend.

Here is a sample configuration:

[secrets]
backend = airflow.providers.amazon.aws.secrets.secrets_manager.SecretsManagerBackend
backend_kwargs = {"connections_prefix": "airflow/connections", "variables_prefix": "airflow/variables", "profile_name": "default", "full_url_mode": false}

To authenticate you can either supply a profile name to reference aws profile, e.g. defined in ~/.aws/config or set environment variables like AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID, AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY.

Storing and Retrieving Connections

You can store the different values for a secret in two forms: storing the conn URI in one field (default mode) or using different fields in Amazon Secrets Manager (setting full_url_mode as false in the backend config), as follows:

../_images/aws-secrets-manager.png

By default you must use some of the following words for each kind of field:

  • For storing passwords, valid key names are password, pass and key

  • Users: user, username, login, user_name

  • Host: host, remote_host, server

  • Port: port

  • You should also specify the type of connection, which can be done naming the key as conn_type, conn_id, connection_type or engine. Valid values for this field are postgres, mysql, snowflake, google_cloud, mongo…

  • For the extra value of the connections, a field called extra must exists. Please note this extra field should be a valid JSON.

However, more words can be added to the list using the parameter extra_conn_words in the configuration. This parameter has to be a dict of lists with the following optional keys: user, password, host, schema, conn_type As an example, if you have set connections_prefix as airflow/connections, then for a connection id of smtp_default, you would want to store your connection at airflow/connections/smtp_default. This can be done through the AWS web console or through Amazon CLI as shown below:

aws secretsmanager put-secret-value \
    --secret-id airflow/connections/smtp_default \
    --secret-string [{"user": "nice_user"}, {"pass": "this_is_the_password"}, {"host": "ec2.8399.com"}, {"port": "999"}]

Verify that you can get the secret:

❯ aws secretsmanager get-secret-value --secret-id airflow/connections/smtp_default
{
    "ARN": "arn:aws:secretsmanager:us-east-2:314524341751:secret:airflow/connections/smtp_default-7meuul",
    "Name": "airflow/connections/smtp_default",
    "VersionId": "34f90eff-ea21-455a-9c8f-5ee74b21be672",
    "SecretString": "{\n  \"user\":\"nice_user\",\n  \"pass\":\"this_is_the_password\"\n,
    \n  \"host\":\"ec2.8399.com\"\n,\n  \"port\":\"999\"\n}\n",
    "VersionStages": [
        "AWSCURRENT"
    ],
    "CreatedDate": "2020-04-08T02:10:35.132000+01:00"
}

If you don’t want to use any connections_prefix for retrieving connections, set it as an empty string "" in the configuration.

Storing and Retrieving Variables

If you have set variables_prefix as airflow/variables, then for an Variable key of hello, you would want to store your Variable at airflow/variables/hello.

Optional lookup

Optionally connections, variables, or config may be looked up exclusive of each other or in any combination. This will prevent requests being sent to AWS Secrets Manager for the excluded type.

If you want to look up some and not others in AWS Secrets Manager you may do so by setting the relevant *_prefix parameter of the ones to be excluded as null.

For example, if you want to set parameter connections_prefix to "airflow/connections" and not look up variables, your configuration file should look like this:

[secrets]
backend = airflow.providers.amazon.aws.secrets.secrets_manager.SecretsManagerBackend
backend_kwargs = {"connections_prefix": "airflow/connections", "variables_prefix": null, "profile_name": "default"}

Example of storing Google Secrets in AWS Secrets Manager

For connecting to a google cloud conn, all the fields must be in the extra field, and their names follow the pattern extra_google_cloud_platform__value. For example:

{'extra__google_cloud_platform__key_path': '/opt/airflow/service_account.json',
'extra__google_cloud_platform__scope': 'https://www.googleapis.com/auth/devstorage.read_only'}

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