Azure Private Link & Snowflake

Business Critical Feature

This feature requires Business Critical (or higher).

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Related Topics

• SnowCD

• SYSTEM$WHITELIST_PRIVATELINK

• SYSTEM$GET_PRIVATELINK_CONFIG

This topic describes how to configure Azure Private Link to connect your Azure Virtual Network (VNet) to the Snowflake VNet in Azure.

Note that Azure Private Link is not a service provided by Snowflake. It is a Microsoft service that Snowflake enables for use with your Snowflake account.

In this Topic:

Azure Private Link Overview

Azure Private Link provides private connectivity to Snowflake by ensuring that access to Snowflake is through a private IP address. Traffic can only occur from the customer virtual network (VNet) to the Snowflake VNet using the Microsoft backbone and avoids the public Internet. This significantly simplifies the network configuration by keeping access rules private while providing secure and private communication.

The following diagram summarizes the Azure Private Link architecture with respect to the customer VNet and the Snowflake VNet.

From either a virtual machine (1) or through peering (2), you can connect to the Azure Private Link endpoint (3) in your virtual network. That endpoint then connects to the Private Link Service (4) and routes to Snowflake.

Here are the high-level steps to integrate Snowflake with Azure Private Link:

1. Create a Private Endpoint.

2. Generate and retrieve an access token from your Azure subscription.

3. Enable your Snowflake account on Azure to use Azure Private Link.

4. Update your outbound firewall settings to allow the Snowflake account URL and OCSP URL.

5. Update your DNS server to resolve your account URL and OCSP URL to the Private Link IP address. You can add the DNS entry to your on-premises DNS server or private DNS on your VNet, and use DNS forwarding to direct queries for the entry from other locations where your users will access Snowflake.

6. After the Private Endpoint displays a CONNECTION STATE value of Approved, test your connection to Snowflake with SnowCD (Connectivity Diagnostic Tool) and SYSTEM$WHITELIST_PRIVATELINK.

7. Connect to Snowflake using SnowSQL.

Requirements and Limitations

Before attempting to configure Azure Private Link to connect your Azure VNet to the Snowflake VNet on Azure, evaluate the following requirements and limitations:

• The subnet containing the Private Endpoint needs to have its network policy disabled. Specifically, the subnet properties need to include the following two attributes:

  "privateLinkServiceNetworkPolicies" : "Disabled",
  "privateEndpointNetworkPolicies" : "Disabled"
  

  Note

  If your corporate network protocols require the subnet in which the Azure Private Link endpoint resides to have network policies enabled, then you must configure a separate subnet that contains only the Azure Private Link endpoint and route requests from other subnets to the subnet containing the Azure Private Link endpoint.

• Use ARM VNets.

• Use IPv4 TCP traffic only.

• If you are using a SaaS application to connect to Snowflake, you cannot use the SaaS application and Azure Private Link together. You can continue to use the SaaS application to connect to Snowflake through pathways that do not use Azure Private Link.

For more information on the requirements and limitations of Microsoft Azure Private Link, see the Microsoft documentation on Private Endpoint Limitations and Private Link Service Limitations.

Configuring Access to Snowflake with Azure Private Link

Attention

This section only covers the Snowflake-specific details for configuring your VNet environment. Also, note that Snowflake is not responsible for the actual configuration of the required firewall updates and DNS records. If you encounter issues with any of these configuration tasks, please contact Microsoft Support directly.

This section describes how to configure your Azure VNet to connect to the Snowflake VNet on Azure using Azure Private Link. After initiating the connection to Snowflake using Azure Private Link, you can determine the approval state of the connection in the Azure portal.

For installation help, see the Microsoft documentation on the Azure CLI or Azure PowerShell.

Complete either Option 1: Use Template Files or Option 2: Create Azure Resources Manually to configure your Microsoft Azure VNet and initiate the Azure Private Link connection to Snowflake.

Important

Options 1 and 2 make the following two assumptions:

• Your use case does not involve Using SSO with Azure Private Link.

• It is necessary to create both the subnet and the Private Endpoint. If your use case requires only the Private Endpoint, use the corresponding files in Step 1 of Option 1: Use Template Files.

Option 1: Use Template Files

This sequence of steps uses two different configuration files to create and initialize the necessary Azure Private Link resources to use Azure Private Link to connect to Snowflake on Azure. The configuration files are of two types:

Template file

Use this file to create a Private Endpoint and a subnet for that endpoint.

Parameters file

Use this file to initialize the resources the template file creates.

Depending on your Azure environment, it may not be necessary to create a dedicated subnet. If you already have a dedicated subnet for the Private Endpoint, you can use the corresponding files to create the endpoint in that subnet.

As a representative example, the following steps assume both a dedicated subnet and Private Endpoint are necessary.

Caution

The template files and scripts create resources in your Azure environment to facilitate connecting to Snowflake using Azure Private Link. Exercise caution when completing the configuration procedure. For additional help and support, please contact your internal Azure administrator.

1. Download these two files for use in the next steps:

   • customer-privatelink-template.json

   • customer-privatelink-parameters.json

2. As a representative example using the Azure CLI, execute az account list --output table. Note the output values in the Name, SubscriptionID (truncated), and CloudName columns.

   Name     CloudName   SubscriptionId                        State    IsDefault
   -------  ----------  ------------------------------------  -------  ----------
   MyCloud  AzureCloud  13c...                                Enabled  True
   

3. For each parameter in customer-privatelink-parameters.json, update the value to match your environment. For example, replace the virtualNetworkName value of privateLinkConsumer_vnet with myVirtualNetwork.

   To determine the correct alias value for snowflakePrivatelinkServiceAlias , execute SYSTEM$GET_PRIVATELINK_CONFIG in Snowflake and use the value for privatelink-pls-id.

4. In the Azure CLI, execute the following three commands using the values from the previous step. These commands create the resources defined in the template and parameters files, including the Private Endpoint. Note that these values are representative examples.

   az cloud set --name <customer_cloud_name>
   az account set --subscription <customer_subscription_name>
   az group deployment create --resource-group CUSTOMER_RESOURCEGROUP_NAME --template-file customer-privatelink-template.json --parameters customer-privatelink-parameters.json
   

   • Replace <customer_cloud_name> with AzureCloud.

   • Replace <customer_subscription_name> with MyCloud.

   • You can choose an arbitrary name for CUSTOMER_RESOURCE_GROUP.

5. Enable your Snowflake account on Azure to use Azure Private Link by completing the following steps:

   • In your command line environment, record the private endpoint resource ID value using the following Azure CLI network command:

     az network private-endpoint show
     

     The private endpoint was created in the previous steps using the template files. The resource ID value takes the following form, which has a truncated value:

     /subscriptions/26d.../resourcegroups/sf-1/providers/microsoft.network/privateendpoints/test-self-service

   • In your command line environment, execute the following Azure CLI account command and save the output. The output will be used as the value for the federated_token argument in the next step.

     az account get-access-token --subscription <SubscriptionID>
     

     Extract the access token value from the command output. This value will be used as the federated_token value in the next step. In this example, the values are truncated and the access token value is eyJ...:

     {
        "accessToken": "eyJ...",
        "expiresOn": "2021-05-21 21:38:31.401332",
        "subscription": "0cc...",
        "tenant": "d47...",
        "tokenType": "Bearer"
      }
     

     Important

     The user generating the Azure access Token must have Read permissions on the Subscription. The least privilege permission is Microsoft.Subscription/subscriptions/acceptOwnershipStatus/read. Alternatively, the default role Reader grants more coarse-grained permissions.

     The accessToken value is sensitive information and should be treated like a password value — do not share this value.

     If it is necessary to contact Snowflake Support, redact the access token from any commands and URLs before creating a support ticket.

   • In Snowflake, call the SYSTEM$AUTHORIZE_PRIVATELINK function, using the private-endpoint-resource-id value and the federated_token value as arguments, which are truncated in this example:

     use role accountadmin;
     
     select SYSTEM$AUTHORIZE_PRIVATELINK (
       '/subscriptions/26d.../resourcegroups/sf-1/providers/microsoft.network/privateendpoints/test-self-service',
       'eyJ...');
     

   To verify your authorized configuration, call the SYSTEM$GET_PRIVATELINK function in your Snowflake account on AWS. Snowflake returns Account is authorized for PrivateLink. for a successful authorization.

   If it is necessary to disable Azure Private Link in your Snowflake account, call the SYSTEM$REVOKE_PRIVATELINK function, using the argument values for privatelink-pls-id and federated_token.

6. DNS Setup. All requests to Snowflake need to be routed via the Private Endpoint. Update your DNS to resolve the Snowflake account URL and OCSP URL to the private IP address of your Private Endpoint.

   • To get the Private Endpoint IP address, navigate to the Azure portal Private Link Center. Click Private endpoints and click on the endpoint.

   • Copy the value for the Private IP address (i.e. 10.0.27.5).

     

   • Configure your DNS to have your account and OCSP URLs resolve to the private IP address. In Snowflake, execute SYSTEM$GET_PRIVATELINK_CONFIG and use the values for private-link-account-url and private-link-ocsp-url.

     If you are using any of the following features or may use these features in the future, it is necessary to create an additional DNS record with the following values or combine the following values with the Snowflake account and OCSP cache server values. This step ensures access to these features via a Private Endpoint.

     Snowflake Data Marketplace or Snowsight

     app.<region_id>.privatelink.snowflakecomputing.com

     Organizations

     <org_name>-<account_name>.privatelink.snowflakecomputing.com

     For more information, see Account Identifiers.

     Note

     A full explanation of DNS configuration is beyond the scope of this procedure. For example, you can choose to integrate an Azure Private DNS zone into your environment.

     Please consult your internal Azure and Cloud Infrastructure administrators to configure and resolve the URLs in DNS properly.

7. After verifying your outbound firewall settings and DNS records to include your Azure Private Link account and OCSP URLs, test your connection to Snowflake with SnowCD (Connectivity Diagnostic Tool) and SYSTEM$WHITELIST_PRIVATELINK.

8. Connect to Snowflake using SnowSQL.

You can now connect to Snowflake using Azure Private Link.

Option 2: Create Azure Resources Manually

This sequence of steps manually creates and initializes the necessary Azure Private Link resources to use Azure Private Link to connect to Snowflake on Azure.

1. As a representative example using the Azure CLI, execute az account list --output table. Note the output values in the Name, SubscriptionID and CloudName columns.

   Name     CloudName   SubscriptionId                        State    IsDefault
   -------  ----------  ------------------------------------  -------  ----------
   MyCloud  AzureCloud  13c...                                Enabled  True
   

2. Navigate to the Azure portal. Search for Private Link and click Private Link.

   

3. Click Private endpoints and then click Add.

   

4. In the Basics section, complete the Subscription, Resource group, Name, and Region fields for your environment and then click Next: Resource.

   

5. In the Resource section, complete the Connection Method and the Resource ID or Alias Field fields. The Request message value is optional.

   • For Connection Method, select the Connect to an Azure resource by resource ID or alias.

     

   • In Snowflake, execute SYSTEM$GET_PRIVATELINK_CONFIG and input the value for privatelink-pls-id into the Resource ID or Alias field. Note that the screenshot in this step uses the alias value for the east-us-2 region as a representative example, and that Azure confirms a valid alias value with a green checkmark.

6. Return to the Private endpoints section and allow a few minutes to wait. On approval, the Private Endpoint displays a CONNECTION STATE value of Pending. This value will update to Approved after completing the authorization in the next step.

   

7. Enable your Snowflake account on Azure to use Azure Private Link by completing the following steps:

   • In your command line environment, record the private endpoint resource ID value using the following Azure CLI network command:

     az network private-endpoint show
     

     The private endpoint was created in the previous steps using the template files. The resource ID value takes the following form, which has a truncated value:

     /subscriptions/26d.../resourcegroups/sf-1/providers/microsoft.network/privateendpoints/test-self-service

   • In your command line environment, execute the following Azure CLI account command and save the output. The output will be used as the value for the federated_token argument in the next step.

     az account get-access-token --subscription <SubscriptionID>
     

     Extract the access token value from the command output. This value will be used as the federated_token value in the next step. In this example, the values are truncated and the access token value is eyJ...:

     {
        "accessToken": "eyJ...",
        "expiresOn": "2021-05-21 21:38:31.401332",
        "subscription": "0cc...",
        "tenant": "d47...",
        "tokenType": "Bearer"
      }
     

     Important

     The user generating the Azure access Token must have Read permissions on the Subscription. The least privilege permission is Microsoft.Subscription/subscriptions/acceptOwnershipStatus/read. Alternatively, the default role Reader grants more coarse-grained permissions.

     The accessToken value is sensitive information and should be treated like a password value — do not share this value.

     If it is necessary to contact Snowflake Support, redact the access token from any commands and URLs before creating a support ticket.

   • In Snowflake, call the SYSTEM$AUTHORIZE_PRIVATELINK function, using the private-endpoint-resource-id value and the federated_token value as arguments, which are truncated in this example:

     use role accountadmin;
     
     select SYSTEM$AUTHORIZE_PRIVATELINK (
       '/subscriptions/26d.../resourcegroups/sf-1/providers/microsoft.network/privateendpoints/test-self-service',
       'eyJ...'
       );
     

   To verify your authorized configuration, call the SYSTEM$GET_PRIVATELINK function in your Snowflake account on AWS. Snowflake returns TRUE for a successful authorization.

   If it is necessary to disable Azure Private Link in your Snowflake account, call the SYSTEM$REVOKE_PRIVATELINK function, using the argument values for private-endpoint-resource-id and federated_token.

8. DNS Setup. All requests to Snowflake need to be routed via the Private Endpoint. Update your DNS to resolve the Snowflake account and OCSP URLs to the private IP address of your Private Endpoint.

   • To get the endpoint IP address, navigate to Azure portal search bar and enter the name of the endpoint (i.e. the NAME value from Step 5). Locate the Network Interface result and click it.

     

   • Copy the value for the Private IP address (i.e. 10.0.27.5).

     

   • Configure your DNS to have your account and OCSP URLs resolve to the private IP address. In Snowflake, execute SYSTEM$GET_PRIVATELINK_CONFIG and use the values for private-link-account-url and private-link-ocsp-url.

     If you are using any of the following features or may use these features in the future, it is necessary to create an additional DNS record with the following values or combine the following values with the Snowflake account and OCSP cache server values. This step ensures access to these features via a Private Endpoint.

     Snowflake Data Marketplace or Snowsight

     app.<region_id>.privatelink.snowflakecomputing.com

     Organizations

     <org_name>-<account_name>.privatelink.snowflakecomputing.com

     For more information, see Account Identifiers.

     Note

     A full explanation of DNS configuration is beyond the scope of this procedure. For example, you can choose to integrate an Azure Private DNS zone into your environment. Please consult your internal Azure and Cloud Infrastructure administrators to configure and resolve the URLs in DNS properly.

9. After verifying your outbound firewall settings and DNS records include your Azure Private Link account and OCSP URLs, test your connection to Snowflake with SnowCD (Connectivity Diagnostic Tool) and SYSTEM$WHITELIST_PRIVATELINK.

10. Connect to Snowflake using SnowSQL.

You can now connect to Snowflake using Azure Private Link.

Using SSO with Azure Private Link

Snowflake supports using SSO with Azure Private Link. For more information, see:

• Using SSO with Private Connectivity

• OAuth and Private Connectivity

Using Client Redirect with Azure Private Link

Snowflake supports using Client Redirect with Azure Private Link.

For more information, see Redirecting Client Connections.

Blocking Public Access — Optional

After testing the Azure Private Link connectivity with Snowflake, you can optionally block public access to Snowflake using Network Policies.

Configure the CIDR block range to block public access to Snowflake using your organization’s IP address range. This range can be from within your virtual network.

Once the CIDR Block ranges are set, only IP addresses within the CIDR block range can access Snowflake.

To block public access using a network policy:

1. Create a new network policy or edit an existing network policy. Add the CIDR block range for your organization.

2. Activate the network policy for your account.