nfiguration files, workload or managed identities.This method may constitute a security risk, because it can give users access to the same cloud resources and services that the ZenML Server itself is configured to access. For this reason, all implicit authentication methods are disabled by default and need to be explicitly enabled by setting the ZENML_ENABLE_IMPLICIT_AUTH_METHODS environment variable or the helm chart enableImplicitAuthMethods configuration option to true in the ZenML deployment.

This authentication method doesn't require any credentials to be explicitly configured. It automatically discovers and uses credentials from one of the following sources:

environment variables

workload identity - if the application is deployed to an Azure Kubernetes Service with Managed Identity enabled. This option can only be used when running the ZenML server on an AKS cluster.

managed identity - if the application is deployed to an Azure host with Managed Identity enabled. This option can only be used when running the ZenML client or server on an Azure host.

Azure CLI - if a user has signed in via the Azure CLI az login command.

This is the quickest and easiest way to authenticate to Azure services. However, the results depend on how ZenML is deployed and the environment where it is used and is thus not fully reproducible:

when used with the default local ZenML deployment or a local ZenML server, the credentials are the same as those used by the Azure CLI or extracted from local environment variables.

when connected to a ZenML server, this method only works if the ZenML server is deployed in Azure and will use the workload identity attached to the Azure resource where the ZenML server is running (e.g. an AKS cluster). The permissions of the managed identity may need to be adjusted to allows listing and accessing/describing the Azure resources that the connector is configured to access.