Snowflake Database Secrets Engine

Snowflake is one of the supported plugins for the database secrets engine. This plugin generates database credentials dynamically based on configured roles for Snowflake hosted databases, and also supports Static Roles.

See the database secrets engine docs for more information about setting up the database secrets engine.

The Snowflake secrets engine uses gosnowflake.

A properly formatted data source name (DSN) needs to be provided during configuration of the database. This DSN is typically formatted with the following options:

  {{username}}:{{password}}@account/db_name

{{username}} and {{password}} will typically be used as is during configuration. The special formatting is replaced by the username and password options passed to the configuration for initial connection.

account is your Snowflake account identifier. You can find out more about this value by reading the server section of this document.

db_name is the name of a database in your snowflake instance.

Please note: the user being utilized should have ACCOUNT_ADMIN privileges, and should be different from the root user you were provided when making your Snowflake account. This allows you to rotate the root credentials and still be able to access your account should something go awry.

Capabilities

Setup

1. Enable the database secrets engine if it is not already enabled:

   $ vault secrets enable database
   Success! Enabled the database secrets engine at: database/
   

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   By default, the secrets engine will enable at the name of the engine. To enable the secrets engine at a different path, use the -path argument.

2. Configure Vault with the proper plugin and connection information:

   $ vault write database/config/my-snowflake-database \
       plugin_name=snowflake-database-plugin \
       allowed_roles="my-role" \
       connection_url="{{username}}:{{password}}@ecxxxx.west-us-1.azure/db_name" \
       username="vaultuser" \
       password="vaultpass"
   

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3. Configure a role that maps a name in Vault to an SQL statement to execute to create the database credential:

   $ vault write database/roles/my-role \
       db_name=my-snowflake-database \
       creation_statements="CREATE USER {{name}} PASSWORD = '{{password}}' DAYS_TO_EXPIRY = {{expiration}} DEFAULT_ROLE=myrole;
           GRANT ROLE myrole TO USER {{name}};" \
       default_ttl="1h" \
       max_ttl="24h"
   Success! Data written to: database/roles/my-role
   

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Usage

After the secrets engine is configured and a user/machine has a Vault token with the proper permission, it can generate credentials.

1. Generate a new credential by reading from the /creds endpoint with the name of the role:

   $ vault read database/creds/my-role
   Key                Value
   ---                -----
   lease_id           database/creds/my-role/2f6a614c-4aa2-7b19-24b9-ad944a8d4de6
   lease_duration     1h
   lease_renewable    true
   password           SsnoaA-8Tv4t34f41baD
   username           v_root_my_role_fU0jqEy4wMNoAY2h60yd_1610561532
   

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API

The full list of configurable options can be seen in the Snowflake database plugin API page.

For more information on the database secrets engine's HTTP API please see the Database secrets engine API page.